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Castle Combe The Masters ‘The Top Hat Endurance Race’ - 2nd August 2008Event Report by John Davies Roberts and yet another Trophy!! This was surely the greatest action-packed racing weekend I have ever experienced. I arrived on Thursday the 31st July for an afternoon of Testing. The weather forecast was rain, rain and more rain. Well, it turned out to be dry, dry, dry!! With new brake disks after Spa, the XK actually stopped when told to. With that extra confidence, going into the corners was a lot more effective. After just one session my lap times were 2 seconds faster than last year with a 1 min 27 sec fastest lap. Saturday however, was a completely different ball game. The circuit had almost flooded overnight, so my ‘Dry’ set up had to be swiftly changed to give me a softer suspension, softer tyres and change my dry tyres to wet weather tyres. Barrie ‘Whizzo’ Williams joined me for my race and after sitting Barrie in the XK for his first ‘Fitting’, all of the cushions had to be removed and the steering wheel adjusted forward as his arms a longer. Someone told me afterwards that Barrie prefers to “Sit on the Floor”. But I really couldn’t remove the seat (Sorry Barrie!!). Qualifying was very exciting, as it was wet and very slippery, but Barrie jumped into my car and was immediately 8 seconds a lap faster, which put us 11th on the grid out of 35 cars. V. impressive n’est ce pas? So that was at 10:30 hrs! Our race was due at 15:45. By midday the skies started to clear and by the time the race started, we had clear blue skies and tempertures of some 23 degrees. Confusing or what? Back to dry ‘Settings’ again, pump the tyres up, JDR under the car resetting the shocks and off I went to the Assembly Area to start the race with Barrie taking over at the half-way stage. At the start of the race, I was away like a shot overtaking three cars and was positioned well going round ‘Folly’, over Avon Rise and heading for Quarry Corner. BUT, the race was red flagged, as a Marcos had blown its engine on the Start Line and had dropped all his oil. On the re-start, I wasn’t so fast off the mark, but held my position. But gradually through the race the tyres were going off and I had very bad understeer. As I was on my last lap before the driver change, a blue Triumph TR4 booted me on my rear off-side wing and sent me backwards onto the grass. I re-started having dropped a few places and headed for the pits, bemoaning my fate and wondering whether the car was OK. Barrie dragged me out of the cockpit and in he got and I belted him up and waited for the compulsory one minute to pass. ‘Whizzo’ and I were clocking similar lap times and staying ahead of the pack with him having a real tussle with John Burton in his XK120 FHC. But the end result was that we came…… ……and another trophy to boot, but a rather expensive body/paint-shop bill looming on the horizon. But, as they say, “No pain no gain”. What a great day, I was absolutely shattered, but a really happy chappie to have come through the battle with my head held high! We will be at the XK60 celebrations at Goodwood on the 8th and 9th August. Look out for us and the Motor Wheel Service Marquee in the Paddock. John D R Action shot courtesy of Roger Gage, official Jaguar Enthusiasts` Club photographer For more XK Jaguar Racing photos visit his web site at www.xkjaguar.co.uk Our thanks to Castle Combe Circuit Ltd for kind permission to film |
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