Riddle Behind the Wheel… at the Race of Champions
A mixed motoring month…with highs:
Column by Marc Stickley
Imagine that you’re amongst the world’s best motor racing drivers and riders from Formula 1, the World Rally Championship, British and World Touring Car Championship, Euro NASCAR, World Endurance Championship (which includes the Le Mans 24 Hours), MotoGP and more. Twenty of the top names in the world of motorsport including Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel, Nico Hulkenburg (who, not content with F1, went and won the Le Mans 24 hr race this year) and Susie Wolff (Formula 3, DTM - German Touring Car and F1 development driver). Now imagine you get them together and decide to hold a work’s Christmas party. What would you do? How about take over the Olympic Stadium at Stratford in London, tarmac it into a twin-track short course, throw in some mental cars and go bonkers!
That’s exactly what the Race of Champions - ROC London - is and it kicked off my motoring month. The supporting acts to the main race had a lot to live up to and didn’t disappoint. Stunt Man Terry Grant set a new world record, carrying 16 people in a Range Rover on two wheels for 20 metres. He then proceeded to lay down some serious rubber, pulling donuts in his specially developed stunt car, while the FMX 4 EVER motocross riders conducted the most brilliant array of stunts and tricks around him. It was like an excerpt from the Red Bull X Games!
After all that high-octane build up, the Race of Champions was on. Driving six different cars - specially prepared ROC Cars (like dune buggies), track day weapons (KTM X-Bows, Ariel Atoms, Radical SR3s), a Euro NASCAR (all American muscle) or the Mercedes AMG SLS GT cars - the racers were going head-to-head (Friday night had seen country specific teams of two), racing in pursuit-style knockout heats to the finals. At the finish, the dramatic pyrotechnics would signal the finish, before they would then start from the other start point and go again. Each round was high-adrenaline, tyre smoking, max-revs action.
My personal favourite (Jenson Button) was pipped to the post by Felippe Massa, but not after drawing the loudest cheers of the afternoon - an achievement given the noise of tortured tyres and engines! Susie Wolff (wife of Mercedes F1 Boss Toto) chose to retire from Motorsport for good at ROC and went up against David Coulthard. Coulthard just grabbed the heat win, but Susie received a standing ovation as she bowed out of her career. In the end Seb Vettel took the ROC crown, beating the 19 other motorsport aces and the lucky competition winner who had won a place at the event.
It was a brilliant spectacle, organised to raise funds for charity - including Michael Schumacher’s charity as he still battles to recover from his devastating skiing accident. I can heartily recommend you watch out for next year’s action- I’ll be there and judging from my social media feeds I’ll need to hire a coach to take all my family and friends!
And Lows:
It can’t all be as good as ROC London and a less than welcome surprise befell one of my oh so enjoyable commutes home from work. Crawling through the now familiar turgid traffic, my Mini developed a severe case of lumpy engine and began impersonating a VW Beetle. I struggled on, not keen to abandon my car in the city centre and made it home- just. After I took the car to my trusted local mechanic, I got the phone call you never want - the simple things had been done and no change. It was going to mean delving deep into the engine. This means bad things and a deep pocket on stand by… The culprit was my camshaft, which had snapped in two. My mechanic had seen this once before in ten years of spannering and was baffled as to why. I have recently fitted a new exhaust to the car and had enjoyed the excuse to upgrade to a less restrictive stainless steel system. I was paranoid that I had somehow caused the break, but apparently it was just one of those things… Luckily neither of my kids wanted Christmas presents, so I repaired the Mini and it is now back on the road!
And in between:
The Formula 1 championship closed in Abu Dhabi, Lewis Hamilton taking the championship. Fernando Alonso confirmed he would be taking a sabbatical from the woefully performing McLaren next year, which at least Jenson Button was joking about on the start grid. The race was a good one, with promise for next year - some new teams and hopefully a return to competitiveness for McLaren Honda.
No hire cars for me to report on, but I did get to test drive a couple of potential replacements for my wife’s hire car - never a chore. The VW Golf she currently has is hiding in the drive, embarrassed at how it may have been cheating emissions tests. As we wait to see what the fall out will be, we tried out some SUVs, with a vague notion that as we are now living “in the country” we may find ourselves in need of elevated driving positions and four wheel drive. The lucky recipients to date have been the Mercedes GLC (based on the C-Class) and the Land Rover Discovery Sport (that I think looks like a less edgy Evoque). Both were sizeable cars (the Disco Sport was slightly bigger), with good equipment (the Merc had more options added) and fitted with the entry level diesel engines. They both performed well, but for us, the Land Rover had size on its side - plus it also had reclining back seats - which may clinch the deal. The Merc just had the edge on refinement and smoothness. Based on those two drives alone, the sensible head of the family may win over… but there are more to try and the Disco Sport may get edged out by something else. 