Well, the weather couldn’t have been more different for the second round of the Mighty Minis racing season. After a cold and wet Donnington, Silverstone National was warm and sunny. 18 cars would be competing on the iconic Silverstone circuit. Qualifying commenced at 10.30 and it was immediately obvious that Greg Jenkins, attending his first race of the season would be pushing Olly Samways for the pole position. His time of 1:15.715 was just 0.006 seconds ahead of Olly when the chequered flag fell. Ahmed Sharabani, also in his first race came home third with Sam Slater fourth. Car 32 finished a little disappointing ninth and dad in car 64 was 14th.
Race 1 would commence at 14.50 so we checked over both cars to ensure they had no issues. To try and increase our speed we made some adjustments to the tyre pressures, hopefully this would gain us some extra time. We did our normal spanner check, re-fuelled the cars and ensured our go-pro and transponders were all working ok.
15 minutes or so before our race we all proceeded to the assembly area. This is located just before the ‘Brooklands’ complex. The marshalls place us in our grid positions and once we are called, we join the track at Brooklands and make our way round to the start finish line. There the marshalls place us in our correct grid positions and I always look at the pit wall for something to mark my position just in case the cars around me are not in their correct places. The 1-minute board is shown and then the green flag waved, and we set off on our green flag lap. We stay in grid order and proceed at a reasonable pace all the way round and back to our grid slots, warming tyres and brakes as we go. The marshalls at the back of the grid wave their flags once we are in position and the 5 second board comes out before all the red lights go on. I check I am in first gear, start my timer, once the timer is close to 20 minutes I know we are near the end of the race and increase my revs. Lights go out, I floor the throttle, and I hope to gain a few places at the start. I made a good start keeping up with the cars in front of me. Gradually I kept gaining on Trevor Peters in front and waited for an opportunity to overtake. Down the wellington straight I got past, into fourth position. This is where I would lie until the end of the race. An intense battle then ensued between Greg and Olly with the lead changing many times during the course of the race. Greg finally prevailed finishing 1.3 seconds ahead of Olly with Ahmed third and car 32 in fourth.
Dad also made a good start picking up five places off the start however on the second lap at Copse, whilst racing Morgan wheel to wheel, he came across Will Tyrell who was recovering from going wide into the gravel and had no option but to spin to avoid a collision. This put him at the back of the pack although he did manage to get past the ailing cars of Will and Sam Slater to finish P11. Five cars failed to finish, with overheating being the main issues, however Steve Rideout had low oil pressure.
Back at the paddock several cars were being inspected and pulled apart in a bid to repair them for the second race on Sunday. A slightly dejected Steve Rideout, who was running a total of 6 cars this weekend, had issues to deal with on Olly’s, Sam’s and Ruben’s as well as what looked like a terminal engine problem on his car. He had just decided to accept he wouldn’t race on the Sunday when a pep talk from Derek, our scrutineer, sent him into action. Before we knew it he had removed his engine and was stripping it down to replace the crank. By 11.00pm he had the engine rebuilt and the car on the way back together. What a tremendous effort. Ben, Will and Matt also had engines stripped and were busy replacing head gaskets that had appeared to have failed. Well done to everyone for all their hard work.
Sunday morning arrived and everyone was busy, either finishing repairing their cars or doing their race prep. Thankfully cars 32 and 64 all seemed fine. The reverse grid would see Morgan Bartley on pole alongside Trevor Peters, car 32 on fifth and car 64 on 11th. Winner of race one 1 Greg starting 8th with Olly 7th. Steve Rideout would start 17th. I was involved in a race long battle with James Bryan, Chris Didcott, Ben Butler, Morgan Bartley and Will Burnham. Each lap we were changing positions; to be fair to everyone it was great, close and clean racing. Literally door to door racing! I finished in 6th place just behind James Bryan, and John finished in a very respectable P11. I have to say his driving has significantly improved over the course of last year. It was great fun to have this amount of close racing in very affordable racing cars. You could tell from the packed grandstand that the crowd were loving the racing.
Our next meeting is on the 21st and 22nd of June at the ‘Thruxton Historic’ festival. A great event mixing historic and more modern cars, racing around the fastest racetrack in the country. It’s a great day out so do come along and meet all the drivers; we are a friendly bunch!
Checkout the next article for more updates from the Mighty Minis racing championship.
Follow Jenkins Motorsport for more updates and thanks to Tristan for the photos.
