Many years ago on holiday I remember dad saying (quite loudly) in Tesco that everyone down here sounds like Farmer Giles. This comment came to the front of my head pretty much as soon as I arrived. The security guard, clerk of the course and a marshal I was chatting to for a couple of hours also had the accent. Unlike a lot of accents I could name (but won’t), Farmer Giles is easy on the ears and generally quite cheery. Whether that’s the accent or Mr. Giles and his many relatives in general I don’t know, but they were really nice folk to chat to.

The format for this meeting was the Nippon were running on the Saturday and the MR2s on the Sunday. After my learning-on-the-day escapades at Snetterton I, along with a few others decided to run with the Nippon on Saturday to learn the circuit. In reality this meant getting to the track Friday night which would be a tight squeeze. I had already packed the night before so rushed home from work, collected the van, put everything inside and set off on the four hour journey.

On arriving in the pitch black, it was clear where we were in the paddock pecking order, relegated to a long strip of grass just before turn 1 which is a long way away from paddock civilisation. Not that I particularly minded though as we were spending the whole weekend there and it was very quiet and pleasant. The only issues were it was a long walk for a pee (in a toilet block without lights) and an even longer walk to the paddock, but once you got there things improved. We were supporting the Britcar you see so it was a fairly big event and not your usual club races meeting so there were plenty of Ferraris to ogle at.

So it’s 11:30 pm, the people who are there are going to bed and my bed for the night is the back of the van which is full of car, and a car that went in crooked and will need jiggling about. Trying to unload a car in the dark using a winch whilst making the smallest amount of noise possible isn’t easy, especially when you get it wrong and the rear wing of the car scrapes on the edge of the van and gets stuck. Oh bugger. Cue much faffing around and a lot of silent swearing until the car is out, and repeat again until I struggled to push it off the access road as I don’t think starting it up would have make me terribly popular. But I was no unloaded and could start turning the van into my sleeping quarters. Hurrah, bed time!

Sods law when you camp, especially in the summer, is no matter how sleepy you are you’re guaranteed to wake up at silly o’clock in the morning, completely unable to get back to sleep as the sun is beaming down on you turning your tent or van into a slow human cooker. As this was another track I hadn’t seen before or really watched on telly, I decided to take a walk around so my first sights of the corners were at 4 mph and not 100. It looks quite an interesting track but the run off areas, or rather lack of are something to think about. At least it’s hot and sunny though and not Brands Hatch style floods.

Saturday morning was a love hate relationship with the track. The love part was the free Kit Kat when signing on, and the hate was the organisation for scrutineering. It was getting quite close to qualifying and we were still in the scrutineering queue. After letting a marshal know the impending predicament he realised we were for the Nippon Challenge and we moved swiftly through.

Predictably in qualifying the MR2s were towards the back mixing in with the slower Nippon cars like the Mazda MX-5s. The slightly weird thing from qualifying was seeing a Mk1 MR2 catch you at the rate of knots and come flying past like you were stood still. ‘I’ve not seen that car before, what the hell is it powered by?’ Turns out a Celica engine, and it’s running in the Nippon towards the front. Plenty of oomph, that thing has. Said Yoda. Anyway, the car was handling much better and judging from the timing sheets was going better too. When I was speaking to Mo about tyre pressures the comment from his son, Ross, summed it up quite well. ‘Don’t tell him our secrets he’s well quick now’. An overstatement yes, but things had improved a lot since Snetterton.

So handling good, cooling bad. There wasn’t anything on the gauges to say there was a problem, but when driving the tortuous route back to our paddock in the sticks for which you need extra fuel for it’s so far away, now full of spectators getting in the way too, someone mentioned my car was leaking fluids. Sure enough there was a puddle of coolant underneath, and a nice neat line everywhere I had driven. I had a quick look under the bonnet and saw it had simply boiled and flowed out of the overflow pipe. A quick drive down to the Stoner Racing tent would put things in the right direction, and I wasn’t the only one suffering. Mo suspected the radiator cap had failed and generously gave me a replacement and also got his mechanic, Alec, to remove the thermostat, which he did with coolant still hot. He’s a braver, or stupider man than me!

Race 1 then. How many laps racing do we get before turbo nutter Subarus come flying past putting us a lap down? In the end it didn’t really matter as for the last five minutes I had chronic cramp in my left leg and foot which meant changing gear was impossible. I gave serious thought to retiring, but the thought of that extra signature on the upgrade card was too much to resist, as it was a lot less painful if I rested my foot on the rest. How hard am I? OK, not very. So anyway I spent the rest of the race driving around in forth gear, which at Castle Combe isn’t that much of a disadvantage as there isn’t really such a thing as a slow corner. Even the chicanes to slow the cars down are pretty quick! Two good things came out of the race though. The first was the coolant was OK, and the second was the car was significantly quicker and would breeze past a lot of other cars on the long start and finish straight. Not bad for a bit of conservative engine tweaking!

I decided to sit out the second race as I had got what I wanted from the day – learning the track, and it was pointless risking the car again for no reason. Not to mention I’d rather not experience that cramp again so instead watched the action from the sidelines.

The evenings entertainment was a party put on by the Mazda boys which we were invited to. Strangely, what started out as Mo Vs Simon (another of his mechanics) in choosing music (salsa and rap then) ended up in a salsa dancing lesson. Your guess is as good as mine.

Sunday – MR2 race day. Ian arrives in the morning along with his dad who had come down to see what goes on, having seen the car a couple of times as I use Ian’s Garage Services. One of the advantages of racing yesterday is I’d already passed scrutineering so didn’t have to go at 7:30 am. You’re not suppose to run race engines this early, but being so far away in the paddock meant at 7 am you may has well have shouted ‘gentlemen, start your engines’ as all the MR2s fired up to drive into the paddock. I can’t blame them for not wanting to push their cars there – it would take you all day!

Qualifying went surprisingly well. The track was grippy despite being first thing in the morning and the lap times were significantly quicker than the day before. I only got a few good laps on a clear track at the beginning of the session which was good enough to put me 7th on the grid. I was rather chuffed to say the least! The start of the first race was less than impressive though. While my starts at Mallory and Snetterton had been bang on, Castle Combe left a lot to be desired with too much wheel spin. Must be all that extra power and not the driver . Surprisingly everyone made it through the first turns without incident, which is quite impressive when you consider turn one here has the highest ratio of starts to accidents in the country. Maybe the post Snetterton words had an effect. My race was going fairly well once we got going until about half way through when the car started to loose grip from overheating tyres. I realised the mistake after the race. We’d set the pressures in the morning for qualifying but hadn’t adjusted them for the slightly warmer air later on in the day. You learn from your mistakes as you say.

Lining up on the grid for the second race my plan was to use less revs and avoid the wheel spin. What could possibly go wrong? You bog down, that’s what. Back to the drawing board for starts I think. The race was pretty action packed battling in a gaggle of cars trying to work my way forwards. I ended up dropping back further though when things got too tight going into the chicane, and putting my dent less panels before my position I took to the grass. I made most of the spots back with some moves I was quite proud of – first passing two cars three wide exiting the chicane, and passing another round the outside of Camp Corner.

All in all it was an excellent weekend, and nice to have a weekend of racing rather than just a day too. All helped by the weather of course, even if it meant inside the car was a little hot. The sweat box was a fairly accurate description Ian came up with. I hadn’t realised how much all the running around had taken it out of me though until I was driving home up the motorway feeling rather sleepy. When you start hallucinating you know it’s time to stop and stay in a Travelodge for the night! That bed was so comfy!