TOYO TYRES RACING SALOONS

As a support race to the Britcar 24 Hour race, the TTRS had 51 cars on the Grand prix configuration for qualifying.

48 cars took to the track for Fridays race. As usual the majority being BMW's, with a smattering of VW's, Vauxhall's, Mazdas, one Alpha, and most importantly 3 Jaguar XJS's.

TTRS has to be the most impressive thing thats happened to club racing in years. Thanks to the efforts of John Willcocks, Julian Newman, & Stacy Vickers amongst several other drivers!

GETTING THERE

For anyone who knows me, you will not be surprised to learn that my preparation for this meeting has been similar to every other race I have competed in during the last 5 or so years. i.e. chaos and total lack of direction!

I have had a whole year to prepare the car for this race, so true to form I have had my medical, applied for my license, rebuilt the rear subframe, repaired year old damage, fitted new tyres etc all within two weeks of the race. I could write a book about all of the things that went wrong with the above essential activities, but please trust me none went to plan!!!!

What should have happened was all of the modifications allowable for the modified 6 cylinder cars in the JEC XJS regs. In reality the car is still a class D car with the passenger seat missing, and 888 tyres.

QUALIFYING (FRIDAY)

If you qualify 49th out of 51, a long list of excuses is required to justify your lowly position on the grid, so here goes:

Mitigating circumstances:

Last race September 2007 Birkett on the Mickey Mouse Silverstone circuit.

Car not run for 12 months.

Ignition cutting out on every lap, progressively getting worse on each lap. (Please note that this explains my erratic driving during practice, but not necessarily during the race!!!)

TTRS RACE 1 (FRIDAY)

Plenty of close racing (Both pics thanks to Max Jacomb)

Richard Ibrahim (Alfa) ahead of Dave Robbie (XJS)

Following a concerted effort by myself and support team (Simon Newbury) with a few helpful suggestions from "Coventry Cats" I lined up on the grid with fingers crossed.

The lights went out, all around tyres screamed, and it was a case of trying to guess the best direction to take to gain the best advantage. Not quite sure whether it was luck or judgment, but my chosen route seemed to work in my favour!

My first big goal was to make it past fellow XJS driver Philip Comer, not for any other reason than he was on T1R tyres and I had 888's. I don't think I could have coped with the humiliation if He had have stayed in front with such a differential in grip!

The superior grip of the 888s made the move on Philip Comer easy pickings!

This was achieved on lap 3, but unfortunately for Philip his race was to come to a premature end on lap 5 with total clutch failure!

The trickiest corner for me was "Club", with a few excursions across the grass. Naturally none of these were my fault!!!! first one was to avoid hitting a spinning BMW. Second was a momentary lapse of concentration due to blue flags and a white BMW with number 100 on it rapidly approaching! Third I forget, but it definitely was someone else's fault!!!

The last couple of laps for me involved a concerted effort to pass Alan Stuart in his BMW 318. The gap at the flag was .171 seconds. Alan finished 21st, and myself 22nd out of 37. 11 failed to finish, including the only two other XJS's!

Unfortunately Gail Hill failed to finish the race, despite a promising qualifying session.

John Willcocks was the the first past the chequered flag with Ken Lark in a VW Corrado 5 & half seconds behind.

Usual front runner Stacy Vickers was a DNF due to a broken driveshaft.

Thanks to Max Jacomb & Gary Walton for the use of their pictures on this page. More pictures from the TTRS race are available on Garys web pages & the TTRS forum

TTRS RACE 2 (SATURDAY)

All of the races needed to be over early, to make way for the Britcar 24 Hour. The TTRS race kicked off at 10:15. The plan was to try and improve on the previous days position. There were of course a few DNF's from Friday that would be rocketing through the pack.

I had a reasonable start, which is more than can be said for John Willcocks who failed to start, and somehow avoided being hit by 43 charging TTRS cars. As expected Stacy Vickers in the bright Orange Mazda soon appeared in the mirrors! Alan Stuart (No.11) got off to an even better start.