I took part in a four-hour Fun Cup race at Oulton Park on Saturday 17th October, sharing the drive with an instructor colleague of mine, Howard Hunt, and a novice driver called Adam Bath.

Our drive came about on the last minute when Fun Cup Series Director, Paul Rose, contacted me and offered Howard and I the opportunity to try a Fun Cup race at our local track. I have been suggesting the Fun Cup to my clients as the perfect series in which to make the transition from track days to racing for quite a while, but apart from doing 5 laps in a car back in February this year, I had never experienced it first hand and Paul thought it would be appropriate if I did!

Howard and I were working on our own track day at Teesside Autodrome on the Friday so we had to miss the Fun Cup test day altogether, leaving our young team mate to do it on his own. That meant that come Saturday morning we were chucked in at the deep end just a bit! Howard had never even sat in a Fun Cup car, let alone driven one and I had only done 5 laps in Neil Plimmer's car eight months previously! So we decided to let Adam get his mandatory 3 qualifying laps out of the way as he had had plenty of practice the day before, and let Howard get out and learn the car as well as get his 3 mandatory laps in, and I would go last.

For anyone who isn't familiar with the Fun Cup, it's a one-make endurance racing series. The cars are identical single-seater spaceframe racing cars with GRP "VW Beetle" bodies on them. There are now two classes for petrol and diesel engined cars - the diesel's, new this year, are faster than the petrol cars, roughly 2.5 seconds quicker around Oulton Park. We were in a petrol car!

Adam completed his 3 laps very safely, putting in a time of 2:12, somewhat off the front pace but keeping the car intact as planned. Howard set off to learn the car but his progress was hampered by the deployment of the safety car two laps into his session. Two laps later the safety car came in and Howard had just enough time to do four more laps and finish on a respectable 2:11. Finally I set off on my session with roughly 20 minutes left. I think the 5 laps I had done earlier in the year helped me a little because I managed to slot into a reasonable pace straight away, dipping into the 2:07's by the time the chequered flag came out. Although that was 2 seconds off the front running pace we were very happy with it considering the circumstances, as it was good enough to put us 8th out of 14 in our class.

Here are some photographs from the race taken by Chris Whittle (click the picture to open a gallery - If you're using Internet Explorer and you see random white pixels in any of the gallery images, try switching to Mozilla Firefox, it's a much better browser!):

The Fun Cup grid is not decided by the qualifying times however, it is drawn form a hat! We drew 2nd... front row of the grid! LOL. After much deliberation the others decided thatI should take the start as because I had been quickest of the three of us in qualifying I would have more chance of holding position and keeping out of trouble at the start... well that was the theory!

Like all good plans this one didn't disappoint and went completely pear-shaped! After the warm-up lap I formed up on the grid and waited for the warning board that would come after the rest of the grid had joined us. I hadn't done a standing start for about 12 years as all the races I had done in recent years had been rolling starts. The first warning board I saw said 5 seconds! I was still in neutral when the red lights came on! I'm sure the pole man was away on red and my mate Ray Grimes who was on the row behind me in a diesel car shot past like a dragster - I think he must be colour blind as well! LOL. By the time I got it into the right gear I was somewhat behind on momentum and got swamped into the first corner! So, sorry guys, to my team mates! It wasn't a huge disaster though. We knew we wouldn't stay at the front for long given that without any practice and jumping straight into a strange car we hadn't got the pace... and it was a four hour race!

Despite it being an endurance race some people treated it like a sprint race and there was quite a bit of bumping and barging in the first few laps. I picked up a bit of damage on the left sill of our car when someone just drove straight into me! Then ten laps in I made another slight error! Defending position going into Hislop's chicane I cut the entry too fine and clipped the tyres on the first apex. One of the bolt  holding the tyres together punctured my front right tyre and and I had to make an unscheduled pit stop. That lost us a lap! At lap 19 I was in again for our first scheduled stop for fuel and driver-change, Howard taking over.

We all did two 40 minute stints each over the course of the race. Howard got down to a similar steady pace to me and only made one mistake (speeding in the pitlane!) which cost us a stop-go penalty, and Adam had a couple of spins as he steadily got faster, which put us back a little bit. We finally finished 7th in the petrol class and we were happy with that given that we had jumped into a car we hadn't driven before and had no practice in what is a very competitive formula! Howard and I had gone into it intending to drive well inside our capabilities and drive at a safe, steady, consistent pace. We felt we achieved that. Incredibly we ended up doing personal fastest laps in the race that were identical but for a couple of thousandths of a second, and even Adam eclipsed our times just two laps from the end!

What we did conclude from taking part in this race was, the Fun Cup is very much what it says on the tin! We thoroughly enjoyed it. No matter where you are in the field you are always racing with someone! But although it is called "fun" and it certainly is fun, everybody takes the racing seriously as well! The series attracts a wide range of experience and talent, it's a great mix of seasoned professionals and novices... we would definately recommend it and we're looking forward to competing in it again very soon!