Driver Blog
The season start at Autosport International
Friday, January 28th, 2011
Autosport International, which is held at the NEC Birmingham each January, is an event that any racing driver can ill afford to miss. It’s where you can find everyone in motorsport in January. You never get the calibre of people, teams and sponsors, in the same place at any one time in the racing season, so it’s important to be there.
I had a rather busy schedule across all four days. Thursday started with David Brabham’s Celebrity Karting Challenge. I was teamed with my British GT champion teammate Alex Mortimer and old friend Luke Hines, who I raced alongside in the Zip Young Guns team some 10 years or more ago.
The charity kart race always makes for an entertaining afternoon and it was a great race this year, apart from we had a five minute penalty and as it was only a 20 second lap that hindered us quite a bit. We were quick. We qualified down the order a bit, but that wasn’t important as we wanted to ensure our public paying driver got a lot of time in the kart, where as other teams used their professional drivers.
Within the first 15 minutes we were already up into eighth place, so it was looking good. Then we got the penalty, but it’s a charity event so it was all good fun and very enjoyable.
It’s great to hear that such a lot of money was raised through the event. It was nice to get back racing after the winter break but it was more important to be helping out someone so well respected as David Brabham is in the sport. David and his Racing4Charity team work very hard to put these events together so the least I can do is put some effort in to helping him achieve what he wanted to in raising money for charity.
I also attended the annual BRDC lunch which is a good opportunity for the young members to get together and also chat about how to improve the Club. It’s always good to see everyone and share future ideas. Unfortunately that over ran a little bit and I missed my slot to talk to Alan Hyde on the Formula Kart Stars stage, which is a shame as I’ve known Alan for a long time and it would have been good to talk about my sponsorship of the Formula Kart Stars Junior Max class.
Thursday was the fun day before the hard work began, as I was helping to run the Caterham Driving Experience for the second year.
Located right next to the Live Action Arena in Hall 4, we run the Experience non-stop all day, offering visitors drift passenger rides. We take them around two laps of the circuit, sideways all the way. Each visitor leaves with a massive grin on their face and get a goodie bag from our sponsors, Autoglym. It’s a wonderful addition to their Autosport International visit.
Obviously, the NEC surface isn’t very forgiving and there isn’t much air circulation, so it gets really hot in the cars, but it’s all great pre-season training. As much as it’s hard work, it is really enjoyable and really worthwhile.
It was also good to help Caterham launch their new car at the show this year, the Caterham-Lola SP/300 R. The latest addition to the Caterham stable looks like a fantastic new sportscar, featuring a two-litre Ford Duratec engine that promises 300bhp. I understand orders are already being taken and a new championship is also in the pipeline, so I’ll be following those plans with interest.
Being so busy at the show, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to progress talks for 2011. However, discussions regarding my plans for the forthcoming season continue to positively progress and I’ll of course keep you posted.