Well what a race weekend! Glorious weather, sublime cars, some great drivers, and racing like no other were a potent cocktail for the fourth running of the Donington Historic Festival. 29 entrants for the pre-63 GT race, from a Ferrari 250 SWB and two Aston Martin DB4GT's to a gaggle of Lotus Elite's and E Type's, to more eclectic racers such as a Jensen 541, Turner Climax, Ginetta G4, to a lone 356, we made up a magnificent grid! We we're looking forward to racing against other 356's but none showed this year. Our times would've put us in the mix, so it was a shame no-one else came out to play.
We qualified second to last, in front of an Elite, with a grandstand view of the rolling start. Being outgunned by cars half your weight or twice as much horsepower is no shame (anyway racer excuses over!) as we watched the start unfold. It was only our second time out at Donington, the first being the season opener last March when it snowed (
) so we had no idea what to expect. It's a wonderful, joyous circuit in an old car. We had spent the winter developing the suspension and brakes and rebuilding the motor after Goodwood, so with only a few sessions last Thursday at Silverstone we hadn't got a lot of miles on the motor or much experience of the circuit.
After being caught out a few times with rolling starts, I knew you were basically racing from the moment you leave the pit lane, except the pace car held everyone up to bunch us for the start as we came up to the start/finish line. I almost ran up the rear of the ex-Le Mans 2.5 litre Aston Martin DB2 (the only other drum braked car in the race), not for the first time! A good start and an eager feeling car saw us scream into the first corner (Redgate) three abreast. Barrelling down the Craner Curves, I realised I had better brakes than the DB2 and another Elite in front of me (either that or I was just feeling a bit braver!) and I braked later into the Old Hairpin, getting them both. A storming run up the hill and we're making up places! A DB4GT ploughs door-deep into the gravel and the safety car comes out while it's dug out (literally) by the marshals… before it returns to the race and we get down to some proper racing.
And I do mean proper racing - I had one of the best races of my life, with a full 30 minute ding dong of a race with the DB2. He would overhaul me on the straights, I'd get him through the corners. He'd barrel past me on the main straight, keeping a mid-track position to stop me sneaking up the inside, I'd take a wider line and then drift round Redgate on a different slip angle from him, carrying more speed in, before racing away down Craner Curves, which I realised could be taken in fourth, flat out, if you had taken your brave pill in the morning! He'd then close the gap up the hill, before powering away on the straight after Coppice, before the chicane, and then we would repeat it all over again. At times I wondered how we didn't touch. The commentator picked up on our battle, because even though we were at the rear of the field, you couldn't put a sliver of engineers blue paper between us at times. I just prayed sometimes that the slip angles of our drifting cars wouldn't coincide, there being nothing I could do about altering my line, and I think him, his. At one point up the hill I was so close behind him I could see the whites of his eyes in the rear view mirror. If he'd lifted or the car coughed I'd have run into the back of the lovely ally rear of his car! We traded places throughout the race, often just inches apart.
An hour is a long time to race though, especially in these old cars, so there were always going to be casualties. Another Aston DB4GT loses a front wheel exiting the Old Hairpin (bet that surprised him!) while a number of cars crawl into the pits with various states of mechanical carnage. An E-Type rams the wall after the chicane, unfortunately burying itself in the entry to the pit lane. Someone blows up and then trails oil or some fluid all round the racing line from the top of the hill all the way round to the pits, making a couple of corners "interesting". And still we race on. I could tell after Ian had taken over that we were beginning to exploit the 356's main quality - reliability. And the car felt strong: the brake pedal was consistent, the handling predictable and exploitable, the engine un-burstable. In fact I found myself wishing for more power which is always a sign of a good chassis. Ian posts our fastest lap three from the chequered flag, testimony to a car that will run long and hard.
A host of dramas befall other front-running cars, including a stop-go penalty for the race leader and his main challenger, which only adds to the race drama. And by the time the chequered flag falls we had climbed eight places to 21st. Just half a lap behind the DB2 - a late spin by Ian, and a slower than planned pitstop (held because of a dawdling E-Type) meant we came within a whisker of winning the drum brake class in pre-63 GT on our first outing. The owner of the DB2 found me out after the race: I expected he was going to shout at me for such close racing. Instead he breaks into a smile and shakes my hand: best race he's had in many years. We both congratulate each other on finishing up the order in out-classed cars, and agree that proper men race drum brake cars.
What a weekend. Bring on the race season. Next outing HSCC International and FISCAR at Silverstone in two weeks. Cheers, Steve
