Birkett 2009 – Birth of Team RGB Pups

I’d been looking forward to this for months!!! A 6 hour relay race, 6 cars, 6 drivers and 55 teams and a massive array of cars!!! Bob and I decided to set our own team up, and pull in as many of the newbies of RGB as possible, and hence the name RGB Pups. There were 3 all RGB teams entered and another partly made up but RGB cars, plus Judy in her own team, so a very healthy showing by our formula!!

Team RGB Pups:-

Bob Mortimer

Austen Greenway

James Walker

Andy Cunningham

Rob Grants

Paul Rickers

Now if you look through the list and know anything about how the racing in 2009 panned out, it would be fairly safe to assume, there was a very good chance that at least half the team wouldn’t finish the event due to one problem or another! So an exciting 24 hours was in prospect! We Had also drafted in Tim Cheney to be a our team manager, plus various other dogs bodies to help us run the team.

As it was being held on the international circuit I thought it best to book the extortionately priced test day on the Friday! I did the first 2 sessions and James had the third so he could get a taste of where the track went. I must say the international is a great circuit, and really wish the 750mc race would be held on this rather than the national.

I signed on and got the car through scrutineering on Friday afternoon to cut down on jobs to do on Saturday morning. By the evening all the team was assembled and we had our own RGB Pup BBQ, where stupid amounts of meat was eaten a sensible few beers drank before retiring for the evening. Again I could not sleep, the excitement was too high, I was desperate for a drink of water (which I had left miles away in the garage) and the roof tent had now totally lost its novelty. So at 4am I was wondering around Silverstone in the drizzle wondering if I’d get more sleep in the garage!

At 6.30am, I woke up to a horrible, dark, foggy, rainy morning! It was going to be a wet race! As we were nearly all prepared the only thing I had to do before practice was fit the wet tyres, soften off the suspension and eat bacon sarnys. We all went out for our practice sessions and were equally impressed by the shear lack off grip!!! I nearly span on the out lap, but not to be out done Bob managed did manage it!! I had seen a 7 with only 3 wheel by 9.15 am, so decided that it was best just to take it easy, especially in practice as that was all it was, it did not effect out grid position. As it was our first year at this (apart from rob) and we knew we were never going to win, we decided than rather than trying to stick out there for 40+ minute spells, we’d all just do 3x20mins and just try and enjoy it. Bob was our first man out and had the task of the grid start, by this time it was teeming it down with rain, there was standing water everywhere and visibility was terrible. I really did not envy Bobs job!! The race started and immediately the safety car was out, on the lat corner of the first lap a radical had implanted itself into the pit wall. This set the scene for the rest of the race, the safety car came for over an hour in total, most of time when poor bob was out!

By the end of the 6 hours, all 6 team RGB Pups cars where running without a hitch and apart from a few minor spins no one had to be recovered. The only real drama was when the marshal came over and told us that bob had gone off and was stuck out on track, so I was sent straight out. On the out lap I was keeping my eyes peeled to see were bob was stuck, but then to my astonishment I saw him driving round as normal a couple of corners ahead! I wondered if he had managed to get going again so waited to see if he went into the pits or carried on, he carried on so I came straight back in. The marshal admitted they had made a mistake and it was all cleared with the race steward and we didn’t get penalized.

At the end of the race we finished near the back, in both the scratch race and handicap race, but personally feel we had achieved our own goal of getting all 6 cars home in one piece. Maybe next year we change tactics, or maybe we just run the same again. The wet really does put our RGB cars at a disadvantage, and are probably the most effected cars, if it had been dry we would have finished a lot higher up.

Well done team RGB Pups (and that includes all our helpers), roll on Birkett 2010!!