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The British Racing & Sports Car Club Weekend at Silverstone

25th August 2007 - the XK Challenge

Well and truly back on form & back to winning ways!

After Castle Combe we were back to the drawing board to solve the mystery of the so-called failed alternator as I was driving only on the battery for that weekend of Testing and Racing. However, when we got the XK back home, I called my friend Steve Gadsby (The Great Gadsby now!!) to come over and look at the electrics. After a lot of head scratching, I bought a new battery, re-built the alternator only to find that the cause was a disconnected wire, i.e. the live feed to the alternator Exciter Unit.

Silverstone was to be the proving ground to establish whether we had truly rectified the problem. On Friday I was at the Silverstone Test Session to hopefully conclude that we had eventually overcome this time-related (after 15+ minutes) misfire and BOY have we fixed the problem!!

We would be racing on the Silverstone International Circuit which the British FIA GT and the British Formula 3 Series use. My first laps were used to familiarise myself once more with the circuit layout where I had last raced with the MGCC some three years ago.

Within half a dozen laps I was flying and put in a 1 min 50.5 sec lap time. Then it was back to the Circuit Book to fine-tune the proper lines for each corner, as Ireland following on from Maggots and Becketts is a very tight hairpin and so is the approach to Abbey Curve.

On race day, my Friday rehearsal really had paid dividends. I went to the Assembly Area early for Qualifying, only to find Rob Newall and Geoff Ottley already there. The other reason for being keen to get going was that we had a combined field of XK’s and 70’s and 80’s XJ Saloons, not necessarily an ideal mix. It also increased the field to 34 cars. This was going to look like a heck of a race in the afternoon.

Roberts the Pot

So, off we went and I immediately overtook Geoff Ottley in his Class ‘B’ 3.4 Litre XK 120 and wanted to stick to the tail of Rob Newall and follow his lines, which I managed to do for about 2½ laps.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw the results of ‘Quali’ (as Alonso would say) as I was 11th fastest out of 34 cars. This was certainly a wonderful surprise as I turned in a lap time of 1min 49 secs. YES, I had certainly returned to my old form and the car was sounding very sweet!

The race however needed some serious consideration and I had asked our Race Coordinator Terry Dye to hold a briefing for all XK and Jaguar Saloon car drivers before the race, to make sure everyone had an enjoyable and a ‘Clean’ race, as there were some high speed differentials but also some large cost differentials between the two categories.

The race went almost according to plan and I stayed out of the way of the saloons as best I could without relinquishing any of my XK positions. And that I did! In fact, once I had established myself and given the following XK’s a comfortable distance I set about enjoying the race, taking the right lines and holding consistent lap times, I finished the race 3rd in Class, for which I received my Trophy.

To tell the truth, I have been nicknamed “Roberts the Pot”. As my race colleagues know that I am only there to go “Pot Hunting”.

My next race will be at Spa at the Belgian Formula 1 circuit, where I will be racing in the two-driver Endurance with Chris Keith-Lucas (CKL) at the "Spa Six Hours Endurance Race" weekend on the 5th, 6th and 7th October.

Fancy a trip across the ‘Little Pond’ into Belgium? It’s a great circuit and a fantastic weekend away.

All the best, JR!!

Action shots 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 Silverstone Circuits Limited for kind permission to film

Click on a picture to see a larger image.