I’m told that traditionally the MR2 Racing Series has a launch day at this time of year labelled as a meet & greet day, or a day to see how much Christmas pudding your competitors have yet to exercise off. It wasn’t my intention to do the Oultonpark track day just 5 days previously but I had that booked a long way in advance, and the meet & greet wasn’t something I wanted to miss. This was the exact reason I backed off a bit at Oulton as I didn’t want to miss out with the car being in pieces.

Being during the week Ian was working that day so somehow I managed to convince dad to come down. As this was only the second trip for the Postman Pat van I wasn’t too sure of getting the car in the van myself as it does require a bit of manual labour pushing the car up the ramps for the last six inches. And you never know, he might actually enjoy it!

We arrived to a very frosty Silverstone and immediately it was obvious having the car inside a van was a benefit. You unload the car and put it in the garage and fill it with fuel. The other drivers who trailer their car however had an unloading programme as complex as unloading container ships. Frozen strap ratchets and frozen winches were their first battle of the morning, and then a properly iced up windscreen that needed dealing with. Once inside their car the obligatory misting up from hell developed. You could have made a fortune selling that anti fog stuff. Of course this being the first time anyone had seen the van there was an excessive amount of piss taking at my expense about the somewhat tight squeeze. Contrary to popular belief the MR2 had not had sections cut out of it to make it smaller!

At this time Silverstone was undergoing it’s redevelopment so it was still bordering on a building site. The pits and paddock were OK as they weren’t being touched, but all the grandstands were missing. The track had a testing facility feel to it. There was also something else that everyone noticed which was mentioned in the briefing. The lack of grass runoff. The tarmac runoff was there, and the gravel traps looked like they would do a good job too, but the grass resembled a ploughed field more than anything else. We were told that the grass hadn’t been laid yet and to watch out for the mud as it is thick, and will probably roll a car if you go in sideways. Take note Sebastian Fisher, who proved this theory to be correct in the first MR2 session bringing out the red flag. His car came back into the paddock looking a right mess, but thankfully no major damage was done, so once it was cleaned up he was back out on the track again.

In the morning Mo had quickly spotted that I still had the passenger seat in the car from Oulton and asked if I would do some passenger rides for his guests. It turns out he had half the world with him and was trying to get them all a ride. I didn’t mind and the guys seem to appreciate the laps, and amazingly didn’t clentch when things got a bit hairy over the cement dust, which pulls you into the big humped kerb, which causes you to go in every direction except forwards as the driver does a great impression of wrestling with an octopus. All good fun though, and reassuringly I didn’t spin it!

There were two downers on the day however. Firstly I sliced my finger on a fuel can (ouch!) and secondly the radiator sprung a leak. Not that I knew about it at the time. It was only when we got home and noticed a puddle of coolant on the van floor underneath where the radiator was did I realise. Knowing how much coolant was in the car, and how much is in the car now there was a discrepancy between what was on the van floor, and what should be on the van floor. The puzzle was easily solved though. In this area there are two holes in the van floor where the winch used to be so the coolant had found some drainage which for the sake of soaking everything else is a blessing. If you found the M1 a little slippery that night with coolant on the road then I apologise.