Day at the races

A DAY AT THE RACES

With an exclusive invitation from Team BRIT to become part of the team at Silverstone for the 4th round of the 2021 Britcar Endurance Championship, editor Matt Eisenegger got to help with the weekend’s race proceedings.

In Essence The Britcar Endurance Championship is a race series for GT cars, touring cars and sportscars that are split into 4 classes. Team BRIT’s entry is the mighty Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT4, driven by Bobby Trundley and Aaron Morgan. As a 120 minute endurance race, the team will have to refuel and change drivers.

The brief was to arrive at Silverstone on the Thursday evening ahead of the Saturday endurance race for a team briefing, unload the car and all the race kit and assemble the pit box. My role in the team was simple, just do anything Al Locke, the Team BRIT race engineer tells you, predominantly moving wheels and tyres, putting them in the tyre blankets and when the tyres are changed, take them to the back of the pit box, put them in a big bath of water and scrape off all the ‘pickup’ (the bits of rubber collected on the soft compound tyres). The brief also included the format for the weekend. Al wanted everybody back at the circuit at 7.30am on Friday morning for a full day of testing and team practice of refuelling and tyre changing under race conditions, and final car set up for the endurance race. Saturday, the race day, would again bring an early start and a very long day.

Rain makes the going hard

Ongoing technical mods

Work never stops DRIVER PROFILE: AARON MORGAN Aaron from Basingstoke was a keen motocross racer from the age of seven. He regularly took part in local race meetings and in April 2006 he had an accident whilst riding a jump on his favourite track, causing him to break his spine. He was in a coma for almost four weeks, followed by a lengthy period of recovery at the Duke of Cornwall Spinal injuries Unit in Salisbury. Aaron returned to study, eventually achieving a 2:1 in Sports Science at Brunel University. He then returned to his passion for motorsport, becoming the youngest disabled person to achieve a National B Race Licence. Since 2014, Aaron has raced as the only disabled driver in the BMW Compact Cup Championship. Having been approached by Founder and CEO of Team BRIT, Dave Player, Aaron raced the team’s Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT4 in the Brit Car Endurance Championship in 2021 and will race the McLaren in British GT in 2022.