Motor Club is a Winner at Brooklands
No, the Metropolitan Police Motor Club did not win the 2016 Henry Surtees Foundation Kart race at Brooklands, but they did win accolades from John Surtees, the competitors, and the crowd.
Qualifying in 9th position, the grid set off on the warm up lap, with Geoff Lamb discovering that he had no brakes, a brake seal had burst on the front brakes. He immediately came into the pits and changed karts, and started from the pit lane after all 32 karts had raced by at the start. So starting on cold tyres and in a new kart he proceeded to carve his way through the field.
Fresh from his success with the FBPMC team at Spa last month he made his way up to 12th place after 35 minutes of sensational driving.
The leading drivers were lapping in the region of 44 seconds a lap, and Geoff put in a number of blistering 43 second lap times.
Handing over to Claudio Zazzarino from Brixton he maintained the good progress lapping at a consistent 44 seconds. He had one huge moment when two karts collided in front of him, and he had to take to grass to avoid them, but he was lucky to regain the track with the loss of about 10 seconds, after his stint the team had moved up to 9th place, after refueling Jack Kingsbury from Babcock International went out and maintained the progress, he was one the smoothest drivers on track, and made some amazing overtakes. The team was still consistently recording lap times of 44 seconds and moving up the leaderboard. When Jack handed over to the last driver Tony Marston from Babcock International the team were in 6th position with just 30 minutes to go.
Tony who last raced in October again was on the pace, and eventually recorded a sub 44-second lap, moving the team into 4th place. He held position for the last 10 minutes as the Geoff assured the team that the kart was fuelled to the end as a number of karts ran out of fuel. It was nail-biting stuff.
One of the key pieces of equipment that made the progress of the team so rapid was the pit to kart radio system which kept the driver informed throughout the race on tactics, and lap times.
Geoff and his team raised the profile of the Motor Club hugely by their display of race craft.
The organisers at the awards heaped praise on the club for their efforts, and many of the professional drivers were impressed with the efforts of the club. To put the result into perspective, many of the top ten teams had professional racing drivers in their teams. The second place team had a driver who is currently competing at Indy car racing in America, another raced at Le Mans this year, and a third is racing in GP 3, and will be at the British Grand Prix. The winning team Titan motorsport won the event for the second year running, and their top driver set the fastest lap of 42.7 seconds. (He look as though he weighs about 9 stone!)
Why does the Club support the Henry Surtees Foundation kart meeting? Firstly John Surtees lost his son Henry in a motor racing accident at Brand Hatch. The Foundation helps:
to provide accident care, with particular emphasis on head injuries
to assist people with brain or physical injuries caused by accident to return to community living through the provision of equipment and facilities
to provide opportunity to be involved in education and training programmes for young people to help them find a career path and participate in society as independent, mature and responsible individuals
In addition support is provided to the following Air Ambulances, Great Western, Kent & Surrey, and the Midlands.
The 2015 event raised £58,000 for the above good causes.
Next years’ target will be a podium finish. Well done to the Motor Club team for putting on such a professional display of racing.
