The evo podcast Apr 10, 2026

The ultimate one-make racing series, a Maserati on fire & new Nürburgring record | Episode 45

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Term

overtake

Overtaking means passing another car. In racing, it’s about picking the right moment so you can get past safely without causing a crash.

Car

Renault Twingo

The Renault Twingo is a small car meant for city driving. It’s designed to be easy to handle and park. The podcast mentions it because it’s a distinctive, compact model.

Brand

Hyundai is a global automaker that sells a wide range of EVs and hybrids, including models aimed at mainstream buyers. Here, it’s mentioned as part of the set of potential rivals to the Renault 5 in the small EV segment.

Brand

BYD

BYD is a big EV maker from China. They’re often mentioned as a cheaper alternative to European brands when people talk about electric cars.

Term

WLTP

WLTP is a lab test used to estimate how far an electric car can go on a full charge. Your real range can be lower, especially in winter.

Term

DVLA

DVLA is the UK agency that keeps track of vehicle registrations. When someone says they checked the DVLA, it usually means they used official records.

Brand

Renault Sport

Renault Sport was Renault’s performance team that made the sportier versions of their cars. The hosts are discussing what happened to that name and what it might be called now.

Concept

USP is going to be its affordability

USP means the main “selling point” of a product. They’re saying the sporty Twingo should be affordable, not just expensive and fancy.

Concept

economies of scale

Economies of scale means things get cheaper when you make more of them. In car terms, it often means using the same parts or building methods across multiple models so each car costs less to produce.

Term

OEM tyres

OEM tires are the tires that came on the car from the factory. The speaker is saying the car feels predictable with those tires, and it can feel very different with cheaper replacements.

Term

winter tyre

Winter tyres are made for cold weather. They grip better on snow and ice because the rubber stays soft in low temperatures.

Term

all season tyres

All-season tyres are meant to be “good enough” in many seasons. They’re not the best in extreme heat or deep snow, but they’re convenient.

Term

summer tyre

Summer tyres are designed for warm weather. In cold conditions they can lose grip, especially compared to winter tyres.

Term

channels for clearing water

Those are the grooves in the tyre that help push water away. That helps the tyre stay in contact with the road instead of riding on top of water.

Term

compound

The compound is the rubber recipe inside the tyre. Different recipes work better in different temperatures, which is why tyre grip changes with weather.

Brand

Cormoran

Cormoran is the tyre brand they tested, and they said it didn’t do well. They were especially unhappy with how it performed when braking on wet roads.

Term

wet braking

Wet braking is how well your car stops when the road is wet. Tyres can make a big difference here because rain reduces grip.

Brand

Michelin

Michelin is a well-known tyre company. In this segment, they’re saying the budget tyre brand is connected to Michelin, even though it’s meant to cost less.

Concept

Nürburgring

The Nürburgring is a very famous race track in Germany. People use lap times from it to compare how fast cars really are, because the track is long and challenging.

Concept

EV

EV stands for electric vehicle, and the segment contrasts Ford’s EV push with its continued commitment to motorsport. This highlights the balancing act between electrification and traditional performance/competition programs.

Company

Prodrive

Prodrive is a company that does a lot of serious racing and performance engineering. If they’re involved, it usually means the car was developed with real motorsport know-how.

Concept

one-make racing

One-make racing is when everyone races basically the same model of car. That makes the competition depend more on driving and tuning rather than having a completely different car.

Concept

arrive and drive series

“Arrive and drive” means you don’t have to bring your own race car and do all the setup yourself. You show up, get the car, and the team helps you race.

Concept

parachuted in

It means you show up to race without much practice or preparation. The speaker is saying that’s a totally different challenge than racing all season and getting comfortable with the car.

Concept

pit straight

A pit straight is the long straight where the pit lane runs alongside the track. How fast you go into the next corner from there can make or break your lap.

Concept

practice and qualifying

Practice sessions are used to learn the car’s behavior and refine setup, while qualifying determines grid position for the race. The transcript’s mention of both suggests the speaker went through the full weekend routine.

Concept

BTCC

BTCC stands for British Touring Car Championship, a major UK touring-car series. The transcript mentions a driver background in BTCC, which helps explain how touring-car experience feeds into one-make and spec racing.

Concept

incentivize the winner

The transcript describes a common manufacturer strategy: reward the championship winner with valuable testing or promotion opportunities. This can include test drives in higher categories (touring cars, Formula 1, etc.), which helps convert spec-series success into career progression.

Term

front engine rear drive

“Front engine, rear drive” means the engine is in the front, but the rear wheels do the pushing. It often gives a predictable feel and good traction when you’re accelerating.

Term

compressed natural gas

Compressed natural gas is a different fuel than gasoline. The speaker says the CNG car didn’t feel strong when revved high, likely because the engine didn’t respond as eagerly.

Part

welded in cages

A roll cage is a metal safety frame inside the car. Welding it in helps protect occupants and can also make the car feel more solid and consistent on track.

Term

push to pass

“Push to pass” is a button or system that gives the driver a short burst of extra performance. It’s meant to help with passing during the race.

Term

slicks

“Slicks” are dry-weather tires with no tread pattern for maximum contact patch and grip on dry asphalt. The transcript shows a strategic gamble: staying on slicks during early rain can work briefly, but it becomes risky as the track fully wets.

Term

wets

“Wets” are special tires for rainy conditions. They help the car grip better on wet track, so choosing them at the right time can make or break your race.

LIVE

It was like the most amazing thing ever, except I realised I didn't know how to overtake.

And we both went off.

Hello, and welcome to the Evo podcast, episode 45.

I have with me this episode, James Dickie John.

Welcome, everyone.

Hi, Steve.

Well, when I ask you, Dickie, you can explain whether you're all good.

Yeah, best of all.

Well, we've been busy.

What have we been up to?

You've been to Ibiza, James, and not on holiday.

Yeah, yeah.

No super clubs were harmed in the making of the new Renault Twingo.

Very unique car.

Yeah, very excited about this car.

I was really excited about it.

I think it's the first normal car launch I've done since.

Yeah, quite a few years.

No, yeah, yeah.

We'll get you back onto hypercars.

So, yeah, Twingo, which is obviously Renault's had huge success with Renault 5.

Yeah.

And this is a baby version.

Is it literally just a cut down version of it?

Or is it?

It is the same platform, yeah, as the Renault 5 and the Renault 4,

but shorter wheelbase and yet a bigger car inside.

So like the original Twingo.

Well, every Twingo has been kind of clever with with packaging,

but this one kind of harks back to the first Twingo from the 90s.

And it's got the seats are really clever.

So the rear seats, there's two separate seats that slide independently.

You've got something like 17 centimetres of kind of forwards and backwards.

So you can prioritise knee room for passengers or boot space.

And then the front passenger seat falls flat.

So you can load stuff that's two metres long in it.

So it's much more roomy inside than the Renault 5.

In fact, roomier than stuff from the segment above.

So I drove to the airport in Evo's Audi RS3 long term.

Twingo is way roomier inside than that car.

That's pretty cool, isn't it?

Because I thought Renault were really clever at years ago, weren't they?

And it actually makes a virtue of the EV platform rather than, you know,

some cars that kind of some of us are a bit of a force to fit.

The because it's been designed from the ground up to be electric.

It really makes styling wise.

It's a bit of a plasticity of the original.

Yeah, it's quite cute.

I don't know how I feel about all the the past station retro.

Yeah, I love them because they're nicer than the amorphous lobs.

And it's kind of a way of validating, I suppose,

a car that might be cautious about going electric.

There's a lot of Renault 5.

There's a lot of hype and it lived up to it.

Yeah. A290 possibly less so.

And that's not being a victim of it.

I think Renault 5.

Because what's about that?

Is the Twingo going to cannibalise five?

Is it?

You know, we know readers who have got a Renault 5

because it just fits in that household fleet.

Yeah, proposition is Twingo similar sort of thing.

It's a car you're not going to get up early to drive,

but it does everything you expect and need a small electric car to do.

And if you do find yourself on a good bit of road,

it is genuinely fun to drive.

You know, it's got a wheel at each corner.

The Renault 5 and the Alpine have got independent rear suspension.

This is a torsion beam.

It's they've adapted the rear axle from the capture

to keep the costs down because it costs less than 20 grand.

They've not fully confirmed UK pricing yet, but they've promised

less than 20,000 euros in Europe and less than 20,000 pounds here.

So, yeah, I think to answer your question,

I think it's kind of the Renault 5's biggest rival in some ways.

You know, they were naming rivals from BYD and Hyundai and other companies.

But actually, I think I could see it cannibalising some five sales

because it's got less range.

It's something like 163 miles off the top of my head, WLTP.

Yeah, that's kind of what Renault 5's got in real world.

Yeah, in real world, we've got a couple in poor weather, haven't we?

And they've only done one sort of 61, 70.

Yeah, I guess one of these in winter, I guess will be much less.

But, you know, the average commute in the UK is something like 30 or 40 miles.

And if it's your second or third car or you've got a predictable diary.

And yeah, more practical than a Renault 5.

You can fit more stuff inside,

equally kind of cute and appealing from a design point of view.

And even though it's a cheap car, it doesn't feel cheap.

It just feels kind of cleverly designed and built down to a price.

So I was really impressed.

And you say it's fun or good to drive in what way?

Just sort of you don't know it's electric

or it's just reacts how you expect it?

Yeah, it's more kind of really nice to measure in its responses.

So it definitely feels electric,

but they've not given it that kind of instant hit of kind of EV acceleration.

I mean, it's quite modestly powered.

It's I've got my notes here because I just forget.

Yes, it's 60 kilowatts, which is about 80 horsepower and not loads of torque.

So it kind of sprints away from the lights quite quick.

So if you're in Parisian traffic, you know, you can go for a gap, but nippy.

Exactly.

It's not chasing which so many of these fall down the track.

Well, isn't it chasing a headline performance figure that actually no one really.

I think the original twingo is always really charming, wasn't it?

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's something a bit different and you sort of engage a different bit of your

brain, I think, when you drive those cars.

Don't you?

There's something a bit like driving a higher car.

Yes.

That's funny.

Something that you would ordinarily find.

Not, you know, you wouldn't have a high expectation of what it what it does.

But I remember many years ago when I was on a sister magazine to car,

then they had car bought original.

Oh, really?

They imported one.

Yeah, they imported one.

So it was quite a cool thing to run around in.

But everyone was fighting over borrowing that for weekends and stuff.

So hopefully sounds like they've captured that.

Yeah, I think it's got a lot of the spirit and the character of it,

but also it's usable the way the first one was and it's all designed to be modular.

And the first ones, Renault UK said they looked up with the DVLA how many

are still around in the UK because never sold here being left and drive only.

But people imported hundreds of them.

And there's still 240 of them apparently running around on the roads here.

How much does it weigh?

It's about 12 tons.

Well, it's happily, it's pretty light.

It's about 1200 kilos and the lightest spec and more than 200 kilos.

So that is the battery.

But we don't yet know what the UK spec will be.

So it's 16 inch, yeah, big wheels.

Yeah, because it's 16 inch wheels for the entry level one in France and other countries.

I think we might get the 18s, maybe.

But the car we drove on the launch was the top spec one.

And it actually rode really well on the big wheels and yeah, quite composed, sort of nice.

Because the second gen had a Renault, was it second gen or third?

No, second gen had a Renault Sport version, didn't it?

Yeah, the second gen was the one they had.

Yeah, the second gen, the Twingo 133, the Renault Sport version.

And like, was there any signs that they might do a...

Yeah.

But Renault Sport doesn't exist.

I can't imagine they call it an Alpine.

That's right.

It's a Gordini, Twingo Gordini.

The question was asked on the launch.

And somebody, well, no, no, they did answer it head on.

So somebody very high up within Renault said they'd spoken to Philippe Krief,

the boss of Alpine, who'd sort of pretty flatly refused that there won't be an Alpine version.

And Alpine's gone on record as saying the only model they'll do that's twinned with a Renault

will be the A290, which is the Renault 5.

And the A290, which is...

But they're setting their sights further up market.

But they didn't say this exactly, but paraphrasing, they basically implied they're going to have a

rethink of how they do sporty Renault models that aren't Alpine.

And they didn't necessarily say Renault Sport will come back, but they're going to look at

how they badge quicker models.

And it won't be for a little while, but they didn't rule out a hotter Twingo.

I guess with the, yeah, sort of what does a hot electric Twingo look like?

Like a Renault 5, it was an A290 with different suspension and a motor.

But with a Twingo, is it just...

You don't want it just to be trim, but its USP is going to be its affordability.

They've only really ever done one that happened with the A330, which was a cool little car,

but it was a bit of an anomaly really, because you didn't have any expectations other than

the fact that Renault Sport provenance, but you didn't have any reference point.

And then it went to the funny sort of rear engine, the next gen car, didn't it?

Which was a, that was a combination with smart, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was a tight with Daimler, so it was tight.

It was twinned with the 4.4 smarts.

It was the only way I guess they could get the economies of scale.

It was quite brave to go rear engine, rear wheel drive, but as it turned out, a conventional front...

It wasn't the rear engine, I don't know if we can't, we were.

Exactly, yeah.

That sounds fun though, I think.

If they're on a bit of a roll with their...

They really are, yeah.

...reissued kind of medium generation hatches.

And it does...

It's funny though, because it's almost Renault's second go at doing an electric,

isn't it? Because we had the Twizy.

Yes, and the Zoe, earlier on.

So this is like, they've had one go at it, and now...

Yeah.

They seem to be hitting the mark.

You kind of think like a...

The Espace would be really...

Yeah.

I saw an Espace the other day, but I'm like...

It was a really clever design, wasn't it?

Didn't we really drive around and things like that?

And in a weird way...

Yeah, Twingo's under our Espaces on the road, so I haven't seen one for years.

Yeah, actually, they're probably quite...

If you want to know how many left.com, it's probably...

But it's that same like Mono space design, you know, the Twingo's that one block, you know.

It's also designing or coming to market with cars that suit the powertrain.

Yes, yeah.

We've all been the biggest sort of pushback on EVs, they're all big and heavy, which is the

quickest way to market with them, but it's Renault 5s, it's Hyundai Instas, it's the Twingo's,

it's the smaller urban cars where range doesn't really come into it.

But it's that emissions free driving, but it doesn't have to be

in a car that doesn't, you know, that doesn't excite, well, not excite, but doesn't entertain,

and if it looks good, immediately you're going to have a more positive experience.

People that like nice cars and are into cars and design, they might not be...

Their other sort of portfolio of cars might not be Renault group stuff, but I think if you were

going to buy a small EV, either for the journeys you've said or if your son or daughter's going to

uni or whatever the trigger might be, you can see that sits alongside some really nice

uni, you could have an Aston Martin or a Renault's overall, and it still shows you are a car

person, doesn't it, if you choose those.

Yeah, it's weird when I go into the London office and park at the station, it is still

those big expensive EVs that are parked there, do you buy that out of choice or

it was what was available, because you could see in there, everyone parks in the same space

every morning because we're creatures of habit, and there'd be a McCann or a Polestar or a Highlander

Ioniq 5 or something, and then the next that they've turned up and they're 911 or their M3 or

something, and so they've got that interesting car, I think if you're interested in cars,

you're going to be interested more in a, something like a Twingo or something.

I think it's nice, you can, by the sounds of it, you can make a statement with a Twingo or a 5,

and it's not a statement that's based on size and power and performance and a prestigious badge,

it's a different way. It feels like an enthusiast car definitely, because it's,

you know, intelligently designed and lightweight, and it's an alternative.

Yeah, yeah, that's good, it's what you want, that's good. We come back to you, Dickie.

Not the first time you've heard that in the last couple of weeks.

Jon, you've been tire testing again. Again. Is there enough tyres left for you to test?

There were plenty of tyres this time, so I mean, driving around in the snow is quite fun,

and lapping them on the wet handling circuit and then a dry handling circuit all on the same day.

I think I did 32 sets on one day. So this was, so we previously mentioned it,

we've done the winter tyre test, and this was follow-up but testing winter and all-season

tyres in not dry conditions, but dry and sort of in some of the summer tyre test tests that you do.

Yes, so this is like stage two of the test, and the most interesting thing was it all goes,

hopefully all goes very smoothly, and you just get a consistent rhythm with doing the tyres,

and you go through all the different sets, and it really doesn't matter what's on the

guy, you can see what's on the guy, but it doesn't make any difference because you just go out and

drive the tyre, you're literally almost like a metronomic, you know what to do on a big bit of

the circuit. And I had one of the weirdest experiences. We always throw in a budget tyre,

it's like the big manufacturers are only competing for like 30% of the market, so a big chunk of the

market is these budget tyres, and we've all looked at them because you know it comes to

MOT time, you're a bit short, well you know I'll just buy a couple of cheap tyres to keep me going.

Like I say we always throw one in, and it's always interesting on the tyre test because it's always

does really badly, particularly in the wet which is where most people find the limit, you know

you're in the wet, you know you misjudge a corner or you have to stop quickly, and that's when you

need all the performance of your tyre in the dry not so much. So yeah the experience was

like I say one I've not had before, I was in the groove, I'd done about 10 tyres,

three laps each of the wet handling circuit, well into the groove, got on the budget tyre,

got to the first corner, I thought oh gosh this is going to be exciting because there's just no bite,

the thing was already slipped sliding away, and after two and a half laps I was, I'd made myself

ill, the car was behaving so out of sync. And what car was this on this, it's just a gulf?

Just a gulf this year isn't it? Yeah, a very steady car, and I had to get out of the car in

the end and go to the bathroom, wow so ill, go all the way, but I splashed water all over my face,

got into the next tyre straight back to normal. So it's just the unpredictability

and the movement in the car was not, that's pretty scary, 70% of the people on the road

on those things. And when you looked at the figures, all the other nine, I think it was nine,

I think this was the all season tyre set, so we'd done eight or nine all seasons then go

onto this tyre, and all of those, that first batch were within two seconds on the lap time,

about 83 or 84 second lap time, this tyre was seven and a half seconds slower than the slowest,

when we looked at the brake test, standard wet brake test, 50 miles an hour to zero,

and it was nine meters off the best, which is two car lengths, and because of the way you

decelerate, when the best tyre had stopped you'd still have been doing 25 miles per hour,

so one car following with that. That's a big impact.

That's why we put the budget tyre in, just to show people.

That sort of makes you feel like there should be industry standards, like the 107% ruling F1

qualifying, because otherwise you could be on a slick good year or something, and it would

probably still perform better than an illegal tyre. Obviously there's EU tyre labing,

I had a look at this, and you get, it's like the way that your fridge is rated, or your oven,

or whatever, it's efficiency, and it's done in that same sort of banding, A to E for wet braking,

and the manufacturers are all self-certified, so they say we, against this standard tyre,

which I think is some sort of Michelin, it's like the one meter that exists somewhere, that is the

produced this control tyre, Michelin, and everything's rated against it, not because it's a Michelin,

it's just they produce this tyre to set the standards, and when you look at the degradation

from an A rated tyre down to an E, it's much bigger than nine metres, so I think the rating

actually is slightly deceptive, because this tyre rates at a C.

Crossed? That's what the C is for!

And the C, so yeah, that seems wrong. Yeah definitely, yeah because if you're browsing

just on the label you think, oh this is a good choice. Yeah, you would never stop, you'd still

be going, go off the end of the course, so yeah that doesn't really make sense, but as always the

message is you do to a larger extent get what you pay for, and I've seen, I've seen a Bentayga on

that's a heavy car, that's a heavy car to start with. You have no idea if you catch

you know the traffic wrong on the motorway or something like that, 70, 80 miles an hour.

You do wonder as well with modern cars with all of the systems on there as well, more and more

manufacturers. Well the width of calibration surely, if your tyre's that bad, it's probably the

the BSC and everything, so you want the hell, well it's on the low friction surface so you don't get full.

More manufacturers are doing their own tyre programs aren't they, work with tyre manufacturers,

so they can calibrate all the systems. You're throwing it completely out of sync,

aren't you, if you put a budget tyre on the ESP or the ABS, what's this, I don't understand.

And of course it can only ever work with the grip that it's got, so even if it's

top system it's so, man this is why we get these results.

And I wonder if that also leads to more and more that we're seeing of people who can

just about afford the monthly on the car but can't afford the maintenance, so they put budget tyres

on it and then they wonder why they're Golf R or RS3 or M4, not just owners of those cars,

but quite a few others, suddenly get spiked and throw it off into the scenery because

last time they went round that roundabout on a cruise they had the OEM tyres.

It's a shame insurance companies don't load your policy according to the

tyres you're fitting because you could offset the cost of a better tyre with a

well yeah yeah you make it a positive rather than just bashing the negative side of things.

But yeah I mean it's always an eye opener but this one was particularly, particularly grim.

And how did they all see, because there's always a lot of resistance, I think the winter tyre

market in the UK is kind of too small, it's negligible now, but all the seasons is big,

but there's still consumers like oh but when it's a hot summer's day I'm on the wrong tyre,

but are they getting closer, is that part of this test wasn't it of doing some of the summer tyre

tests with all season tyres? Yeah, as well as throwing in the budget tyre we also put in a

standard summer tyre and we throw the winter in with the all seasons and the all season

and all season at the top all season and they are getting better but obviously every tyre is a

compromise, so you have to accept that you will get less grip, less dry braking grip

in high summer with an all season tyre than you will with a standard what we call an all season

which is our summer tyres. So for a lot of people they only need the peak performance of the tyre

in an emergency situation whereas maybe more of us are probably you're going to drive closer to

the limit of your summer or you're going to enjoy the extra headroom that a summer tyre has, so

you maybe notice the difference between an all season and a summer but for a lot of people it's

not an issue until an extreme situation. I've been driving around on all seasons for about a year

and it's very reassuring when you see the snow coming down because you know your performance

in the sort of snow that we get is pretty much as good as a winter tyre but a winter tyre is much

more compromised when it gets sunny, so the all season does have a marketplace, I would put it on

you know my partner's car she's not really into driving but I know that it would be.

And it's wet where the braking which is the most important one isn't compromised in the summer?

It's not as good as a summer tyre because the way a summer tyre is designed is designed big

channels for clearing water so it's a bit better than the pattern that you get on an all season

and of course the compound is slightly different as well because they're all seasons like a winter

tyre has to work at much lower temperatures. It's always fascinating. Yeah, it's really interesting

but it's interesting and also frightening when you see a Bentay or anything on just yeah

ditch finders or whatever but some of these budget brands are owned by some of the

bigger organisations as well aren't they? Well yeah that was I think we might have

mentioned this in a previous test but the summer tyre test that we did last year for Evo

we had something called a Cormoran which turned out well it was bad and that the performance

wasn't great shall we say. You can look back at the test but yeah the wet braking again was

it's pretty grim and it turns out it's owned by Michelin but it seems to be a Michelin makes some

of the best tyres but it seems to be an independent arm it's just a budget tyre that

we think is polish and that's fine it's a polish tyre it wasn't that cheap that's the only thing

it was more expensive similar to regular sort of premium brands and I only had I

came across it a couple of times where I was digging out prices for the tyres but it only

once did I say it's from the Michelin family which I thought was well that that's the proper

you know it's a stamp of a brutal because most of these time makers have a budget line so Continental

has Uniroyal, Michelin has Claibor as well yeah so yeah Bridgestone is Firestone I think

so there are these sub brands but they're quality brands they just give you you know a bit less

outright performance still Uniroyal is the rain tyre so they concentrate on that performance which

is a great thing to do but yeah this this particular brand Cormorant not seen it before

but certainly that it seems to be very little liaison between Michelin France and the Polish

subsidiary interesting stuff you would have thought that they'd have a standard that if we're

going to have a brand then meet a minimum standard but I guess it's market whatever market they're

selling into and what the standards are I think my America has always been a market that's based

on mileage yeah you get the Walmarts for the 50,000 mile specialist don't you which one would be

absolutely correct I might get those in a Texas shower yeah for owners it'd be fantastic when

you've worn them down to two mil or something after 10 years that's on the three-ton pickup

behind me good grief well Dick we were going to talk to you about driving a

Aston Martin Van Digest but you kind of bowed halfway through yeah my very long story

short my gallbladder through a bit of a rod as well I was on the test so yeah Aston passed his

ambulance proficiency driving and whisked me to Bangor A&E and then I got home felt okay for a

few days and then felt awful again and then the morphine wore off thought I'd test Peterborough

A&E and then came out four days later so yeah a bit of a bit of a unforeseen

few weeks so I've not been doing a great deal of driving but I can comment on the

Paul exterior of the road I was quite tuned in now with saw insides but yeah good to see

you back on the mend yes yeah biscuits are dead to me now sadly oh really well at least until it's

whipped out at some point but yeah well that's no bad thing either is it so they'll just be slightly

less of me to see on the podcast yeah well good to have you back we're now we move on to a topic

that also doesn't sort well it does send you sort of a whiter shade of white doesn't it when we

talk about the Nurburgring and people racing except but Ford has set another set a latest

record which was was it the fastest lap for a car with a piston or far it's the fastest

conventional internal combustion engine record isn't it so the second on Wednesday or Thursday or

we know so the distinction being that the Porsche's 919 Evo record was a petrol electric hybrid and

the VW IDR was pure EV so yeah yeah this is more of a conventional lap time although it's one of their

super special yeah so it's the Marley it's the latest mark for the evolution of the G4 GT wasn't

it yeah V6 engine GT from a while ago now but yeah there's been that out for for a long time haven't

been developing it 2016 it won the month the anniversary isn't it yeah they move to date yeah

and the rakes to um allegedly um yeah six fifteen nine seven seven that's a very fun which is a

very fast one so that's uh just sort of around four seconds off Stefan Beloff's time which is

sort of held up as a I think that's still the ultimate that's the ultimate time I think for a

lot of people I think it's the the last true record because it was a race car in race conditions

was yeah but I mean to get that close what um there's some people who are very anti lap times at

the Nurburgring they don't mean anything and others are like well it's the it's the one benchmark

that everyone can go for it it's the measure isn't it it's the measure that everyone else kind of

but some people's uh Honda Type R you did a piece on sort of the Type R Civic Type R going out

production that Honda were very much on we wanted that front wheel drive lap record Volkswagen with

the GTI 50th edition yeah right I want to go back and I know you saw that Honda Type R and Porsche

obviously are always pounding around setting up that record with everything that's a GT and turbo

but then there's others Ferrari McLaren and like some people don't seem that bothered or some brands

don't seem that bothered I I do I part of me loves it that anyone is prepared to put themselves out

there and and build a car to to break a record I think it possibly means less when it's not a

production road car maybe but then you could argue developing a car to go very very fast

around the Nurburgring probably takes you away from where a production road car should be so

there's no there's no right or wrongs with it I do I enjoy the fact that Ford are like on the one

hand they went pretty much all in on EV didn't they certainly Ford of Europe and a lot of the

emphasis with their trucks and things in the state so it was a huge moment for Ford as a

in the production world but then I don't think they've ever been more committed to motorsport

than they are now I know the Red Bull thing is a is a partnership with Red Bull powertrains but

still Formula One, WEC GT3 all their other you know Dakar activities Dakar and then and then

doing something like this I think maybe and obviously they're still building v8s in America

and then they've made a commitment to keep making those as long as they possibly can so it's quite

a nice one offsets the other almost doesn't it I think if you can still love Ford for doing

all the amazing things Ford have done for for 50 60 70 years in motorsport I love the fact

that they're still committed to to making that happen yeah because I want to go back with the

Mustang GTD don't they yes they feel there's more torque they're still going around aren't

that sort of footage recently and they did go didn't they go they didn't they knocked a bit off

what they've done previously they've beaten the ZR did they not beat the ZR1X we should know

I'll have to go back and check but it's I mean yeah they're just banging away aren't they

trying to get in there with the car

I don't know with this with the latest record I don't know what it means

no it's true when they become because you sort of look at the cars at the top you take out the

918 a hybrid EVO thing they built and then AMG1 was a 6 629 which is a series production car

um yeah but then you've got sort of pro drive built the Zmizomi su7 ultra prototype

which did a 622 but well that means even less isn't it because you've never heard of it you'll

never see one again and it was built so far from china and um but it's and then got branding all

around the circuit haven't they to put off the show off the time and stuff um but then they

you've then got mantai with a gt2 rs mr doing a 643 which seems the most relevant time because

that is a car that owners will have and can go into mantime buy that kit and it's much more

consumer-relevant than yeah I think you go to a go to a mantai track day at nerberg ring and it's

just you get it's like being snow blind yeah everything now has has a full as a fin mantai

kit on it and there you look around the paddock at the the registration plates on the cars and

they are literally from everywhere from like scandinavia down to spain and then eastern europe

and it's really super impressive and obviously with the caimans that they do as well so they're

I think you can you can really see that they're building cars for people that use use the cars

for the purpose they were yeah they were designed it's not like an empty exercise I think with ford

it's just a I think it's probably an expression of their of a bit of frustration that they can't

it's harder and harder for manufacturers to go out and make a wild road car or

they've got fewer series production cars to develop high performance versions of you know

but it doesn't mean that the desire to make those cars has gone away so I think we should be

we should be very happy that they're that they're doing it and the achievement is yeah I mean it's

it's extraordinary isn't it until you then think about the the bell off time and you know that's a

40 40 year old racing technology yeah let's just say on a circuit that's probably and the

circuit was a lot lumpier and bumpier than it is now it's like it yeah some the corners are

slightly different shapes now aren't they and some the crests are a bit less crusty and I mean

it's still formidable obviously um yeah better quality tires yeah yeah it's happening if you

think how fast how far everything else tires breaks yeah dampings bring rates you know they're

building you almost build a car just for the ring to set a time I think principally it's nice that

they're still doing it with most engines isn't it yeah rather than just yeah rather than just

pursuing EV stuff which I think there's such a disconnect between what emotionally yeah the

speed that'll just like the road cars really the numbers sort of seem a little bit meaningless I

think the there's some context there isn't there because actually the technology between a group

see car and now fun to just they're refining the same yeah this is a stuff up there rather than

something completely it's almost the ultimate expression of what that platform can do that

Mustang weighs compared with bell offs car as well yeah the same I mean the four third mark for

GT 40 thing is probably aero wise is I don't know what the downforce figures might be actually

yeah the aero is pretty yeah everything's moved on but um yeah it's an impressive thing to and also

came out of nowhere for a car that was it decade old now I know the road cars came a bit later than

the yeah they've been doing the track only things for a while there's customer stuff for a while

haven't they I guess I guess multi-matic being multi-matic if they're there and you can't really

stop them doing that sort of stuff and if they've been there a lot with a Mustang then I suspect

they'd probably simulated the time they could do in in the other car and you know they could do

something it's cool to know isn't it it's always the what if question isn't it yeah and you rather

I wonder how fast this can go yes the eternal I think Nurburgring is is it kind of falls in and

out of fashion doesn't it all favor I think all the max for stuff and stuff for Nurburgring

upcoming Nurburgring 24 hour I think that that's going to get a lot of people the crowd

interested in it at that first race he did yeah it's not going to help with tourist

parking is it I'd love to see it actually I would like to get out I've not really been back

since I've raced there but I'd love to see that race just to see him I think we should do an evo

road trip we should all head out there in the meantime so be cool I think the lap times mean

more when when there's comparative time so when he did his I know that the you know their race

win was ultimately taken away wasn't it for some using an extra set of tires for the weekend but

for him to qualify two seconds ahead of the next fastest person around there is nuts yeah

when it's like a few temps in it yeah there's a lot of experts who know that yes yeah and

normally as you said they're normally within so close to each other aren't they even over such

a long lap the pros yeah to have that advantage yeah it's going to be it's end of May's middle

of May I think isn't this your way I think we need to we need to try head out there I'm not I'm not

sure the Nurburgring is aware of how many people just seeing how many people turned up to regular

vlm race which is normally one man and his dog sat in the grandstand isn't it in by comparison to

the crowd green hell is going to be orange isn't it yeah yeah for a long weekend yeah that's going

to be yeah be impressive um well should we end uh let's end part one next we're going to come back

in part two um sticking with the track theme um we're sort of going big down memory lane of some

one make racing that we've done because Evo has partnered with uh with a one make series in the

UK so we're going to a bit of detail on that um so again have a cup of tea we'll have a biscuit

dicking with me i'll have a sip of the water sip of the water we'll we'll split his uh rations and

we'll see you after the break welcome back everyone to episode 45 of the evo podcast um

john and i've decided that gingerbread digestives don't work and so we then also have to do a

second test and gingerbread kick cast don't work either so um don't combine the two really

they work less i would say yeah elbow grease detergent is what the kick cap tasted like um

anyway um i hope they stole however many thousands of tons of those

that went missing in italy right um part two we uh we left you talking about nirburgring lap

records which kind of kind of an evo way links us to uh something some exciting news for 2026

evo and our um sort of grown up part of the business car well have partnered with uh the

port career cup gb for 2026 so you will see uh car well across the wind screen of all the cars

and evo if you're fortunate enough to pop into the uh clubhouse at the career cup rounds evo will

be in there as a technical partner which um we've got some history with career cup we have

dickie and i we have both been very fortunate to participate in it but it also got us thinking

of all the other one make race series that have been and gone um what we'd like to see what ones

have excited us which ones have just made us think who on earth thought that was a good idea um

but yeah one and james i think you we'll start with you because you said the only racing you've

managed to do which in journalist speak is black yeah have been one make racing yeah almost all

the racing i've done has been one make series so yeah the the first race i did was outside a

journalism entered a scholarship open to anyone without a race license and then the prize was

to do a round of the janetta gt five challenge which at the time was the sort of senior version

of janetta juniors um and then yeah since then it has all been blacked and it has pretty much

all been one make series so um you have done mini challenge uh like you dickie did a round of the

oudie tt cup yeah um um germany um yeah um it wasn't the no burger ring grand prix sir

well we can we can we can cover the yeah we'll come through that in a way i'm sure um it

rounded the pure McLaren gt series which was McLaren's kind of arrive and drive series um i've

done a round of the caterham seven uk championship which was absolutely terrifying they're all a

bunch of axe murderers but it was brilliant that's probably the most fun frenetic bit of racing

i've ever done and i did a season in the radical sr1 cup um and a couple of other janetta rounds as

well so got the spectrum you know if you managed to talk about the radicals without saying you want it

i yeah i was doing this to a fault yes i think it's a long time ago now two things here there

isn't there is doing a one-off round yeah away you're parachuted in yeah in the celebrity or

target car pr yeah yeah which you never know how it's set up yeah and you're competing against

being your audience three or four rounds usually that's a much different prospects yeah than

starting a series as a regular yeah yeah and getting your eye in with testing and learning on

a car and the team and working with everyone i think if you're going to do that be parachuted

in do the first round of the year before everyone else has got their eye in you know we're getting

up to speed you did a season didn't you and you've both done four seasons haven't you back in the day

yeah yeah yeah well you did tuskens didn't you which is which is surely the greatest one lake

series ever i think so yeah i come from catering class c which is my first year of racing and

that was the the first year that catering had introduced the case series which is a brilliant

engine for that car but it only had 103 horsepower or something like that and as is the way of these

things they were dead keen to promote it so there's my car and there were a couple of other

um teams that ran them for the first year but we were up against the the forward i think might be

pre-crossed low forwards which had gradually got up to about 120 odd under the 30 horsepower yeah so

there was the agile c-class k series car against the c-class forward engine one which was a battle

that went on all season and i won a few rounds and a chap called rupert douglas penn had won

quite a few rounds as well i don't remember that name yeah and then he came down to the last one

and he just picked me so much to the chagrin of the company which obviously wanted their new car to

win but as the case series is still a fantastic example of that case series um that case series

one is much much much better than the forward engine one in terms of handling so it was brilliant

then i went from there into tuskens which is like from 100 horsepower to 400 horsepower

but that was that looked fearsome yeah that was just from reading its static on a page

in performance car it was it was an amazing car in that it was not really that stable

and so you i remember my first test was at silverstone i did the last round of the previous

season at the end of the coach and so i did one round see if i could get on with it and it was

slightly damp silverstone which is the worst conditions i loved it i think it was great fun

you know there's a lot of oversteer getting on always look quite soft yeah like quite like

their road cars really but quite friendly in for a car that oversteers quite a lot it's you

know that's what you want and the people who really could pedal them like marquels and

those ilk they they didn't oversteer them so much that they just had them set up just

just perfect there's Colin Blower was there in a few like one makes series always seem to have

it's like if you've done the championship they're like oh my god he's mega but for anyone else

probably a long time never they're like brilliant racing drivers no one's ever heard of but it just

seemed uncannily dialed into the the thing they're racing yeah you and the the tusken you come down to

the along the pit straight first corner big big first corner at Silverstone

you hit the brakes and the car would take attitude and that's yeah you come in you say wow

i get to the end of the straight i do this no oh yeah they all do that so that's what you've

got to get on board with i remember watching some uh footage oh god what's his name

the guy does commentary on uh btcc Ben Edwards no no no no no no no Tim Harvey oh yeah he

drove the hro in car occasionally and i was so fortunate he's in car stephanie's he's one hand

on the gear lever and he's driving the car yeah one hand on the steering wheel i think i so relaxed

the rest was a sort of wrestling with it but that was a fantastic fantastic championship

was that the full season you did yeah i did the full season was that 94 95 i think it was 94

i think it might have been 93 actually my first race was in a catering again so that was a year

after you'd done yours i think because it was k series road sports or something i can't remember

so it was just k series which was a bp sponsored yes like guest car that was cattle park so that

was like quite a never been to cattle park never driven a catering before it's the perfect car

yeah i can remember i was so excited and so nervous at the same time and i didn't have a

race suit so i borrowed um so lovely guy magnus led magnus if you're listening hello um good job

but he used to run a team called hyperion and he's a lot i mean most people are a lot taller me

he's a lot so i borrowed his race suit so i look i look like a kid wearing his day

like one of those you'll blow up things you get outside car dealers i don't yeah yeah i'd a pair

of i didn't even have any race but i had a pair of converse shoes for the for the test day totally

out of my depth absolutely loved it and then did okay in practice and qualifying and then i can

remember being sat on the grid and i thought my literally thought my head was going to explode

because i just i didn't know what was going on i was watching the lights one and then as soon

as the lights went it was like the most amazing thing ever except i realized i didn't know how to

overtake it's quite narrow cattle as well there's not a lot of space team i'm gonna break later than

you and and we both went off had you locked eyes before you went off

yeah i've completed my overtaking maneuver by getting back on the track quicker than he

so that counts that definitely but yeah i think i think catering's are the i know there's lots of

different classes but i think as a one make championship i know we're all quite fond of

them because yeah some of these journalists they've always been very generous in letting people

yeah drive them but it's not an expensive championship i can't understand this old man

speaking i can't understand how people spend tens of thousands of pounds there's always ways to

spend money in i know it wasn't my money but we didn't spend much on performance car because i drove

it to most of the realms yeah and it was on the same tyres that i raced on but that was the whole

did the whole season premise of the evo catering academy wasn't it but it was yeah first time racing

but you purchased the car i think it depends you have to drive the car you don't depends on the

level doesn't it of the racing i think because subsequently so magnus aforementioned magnus

then i went from that one race to doing a full season in the vento vr6 challenge so that was

like a vw factory backed one make tin top series now they had race car then they had quite a big

sponsor so it attracted lots of other one make specialists sorry i mean like dave pinkney did

ray arms yeah mark lemma had done so ray arms used to be a btcc driver when btcc was multi

yeah class so if you look back at the early nineties i think he drove a pg tips tea livery

civic like a little friend i don't know what jen the civic was um yeah mark lemma had come from

them x5 and was going to talk and this ultimately went to touring cars so you've got all these

different people and that i think when you see different teams running cars and you're on a

support package for a bigger meeting i think that's when and slicks are involved and that's when the

costs start to go up and the the the testing and the tweaks and the uh cheats shall we say

well the people people find loopholes in one make series like you would yes believe but it's

it's almost like you can't show your hand because everything's so close you don't suddenly want to

did attract specialists those high profile one make championships people who wanted to climb the

ladder would would go in your time win them wouldn't they so you're up against if you win one then

you're doing pretty well yeah there's some big names that have won one make series have gone on to

to much bigger more successful things haven't they they've gone through

playtoe jason playtoe wasn't he started in reno's my spiders yeah i'd raced with those as well one

off right yeah did he run so absolutely terrifying yeah well thruxton all the car like well both but

they they wound to get those to work they wound them right down so they were basically on the

bump stops right yeah so you'd be it would sort of start doing that real fast corners and then again

oh and it was just hanging on to it yeah phil bennett was mega in yeah spiders and

and mega in reno sport spiders and they they just yeah yeah i think it's when the when the

manufacturers have a budget yeah and obviously that was a on the toka package and then became the

clio cup later didn't yeah so then they've got a they they would incentivize the the winner

because they get a test in a touring car or test in a formula one car or whatever you know

whatever it might be so i think that's that's when people take it super serious but i used to love

that to just get dropped in because the expectation there was no expectation other than you'd probably

get in the way and yeah no it was always it don't get in the way they're in the championship

don't get in their way yeah but have fun yeah don't get in there but you'd have some really

good people to measure yourself against and usually the team that ran the um the vip car

yeah would always be front they had to run a fully legal car i suppose they couldn't be seen to be

testing the the regs at all if they're if if it's the manufacturer paying for them so i i guess

you might be a little bit of a disadvantage but yeah i've got other weird ones have we done

mgf mgf oh yeah you've sponsored the last one yeah that totally bewildering car i never ever ever

got my head around how they i guess the race car didn't have hydro gas did it like the road car

oh really wow it was clamped down right okay yeah yeah no we we had a we had a handle

yeah we had some some of the red the wheels and some bits from the race car but i remember

driving the the guest car again silverstone and i think andy wallace was in another best car

and this would have been 90 25 years ago so it wouldn't have been 99 wasn't it so he was he was

right i'd still be racing at lomona at the front at the peak of his powers yeah and he's like i

fucking hate this because he could because andy is like totally analytical yeah and he he'd only

had like a bit of a test and then in the race and they were so bit like you were saying with the

tuskens i think they were so sensitive to how you drove them and you had to drive around a lot

for cars to set up weaknesses but then if you knew how to set it up it was just bewildering

you're just reminded that we went to alton park one time with the tuskens test and john cleland

was there as well and i used to help him write his column for fawn's car and i said come on then

john hop in do a few laps and see if you can set this car up so he went out did a couple of laps

and they they adjusted it all completely obviously where he went out again he said made no difference

so yeah that's how tricky it is the last conversation i heard about the mgf trophy

was with paul o'neill because he gave that so one of the one of the janetta racers he was coaching

one of the other drivers in it and so he was talking about evo and about mgfs and yeah and yeah

yeah he said that's where he started racing and he's his brother yeah uh sporty spice his body

yes yeah a spy's brother yeah yeah yeah my first race was a one mate was a fjord fiesta fiesta the

weekend of john's wedding so i woke up with tons lightest and then went down to brown's

hatch and had my first race blimey and he drove the wedding car as well no he drove the way oh i

drove the of course you did the i tried the wedding story that's what i drove two wedding cars

yeah the t-car one didn't make it to the wedding

yeah one mate didn't make it to the wedding yeah that was my first race yeah first race was was

fiesta credit you know ford had a we're talking about them at the nirburgring they had such a

you know they supported fiestas for a mile two i think it was was yeah in that credit series

and it was part of the toca package you just had to rock up at brown's hatch it's all very easy when

you've been for years following motorsport in the paddock or everything i could do that i could

do that and then you're on the grid going what do i do oh there is a great this is the grade

that they talk about at brown's hatch when you're sat on the grid and it must have been a pretty cut

throat championship because that was like a feeder series to touring yeah well you had those that just

did we were run by collin stankham yeah he was the man wasn't he was the man for he ran so many

cars in fiestas which he the team truck was an old debonums 40 foot arctic and um but you had

those who were sort of just serial um single mate that's what they focused on they had no ambition

to go outside of fiestas they just wanted to dominate then you had the younger drivers who were

it was their first stepping stone hopefully we're on a toca package so we get the either

manufacturer i mean a manufacturer series will someone from ford pick me up or see me or someone

from another manufacturer see me so yeah it was and you're just parachuted in me had a day's test

at brown's hatch i got all the uh gravel track journeys out the way in the testing um short

short circuit yeah didn't have time to do that it was a bank already weekend but we still didn't

have time to do the long circuit um and the pace was it was still hardly any time between

front and back of the grid but there was clearly sort of three areas of the grid there were young

hot shots that kept firing it off there was those who'd been doing it for years that just

knew when to pick off and take their opportunities and they were sort of the newbies and i was a

guest and there people didn't who were running the cars themselves were sort of in their own

pack so there was always there was sort of three packs of competitiveness in the race

but yeah you just nothing prepares you for that first time of what do i do here i've

watched it on tv enough and been an armchair expert that you're sat there and then every

particularly when the cars are so equally paced you got to find that advantage that never goes

away though my i did a i used to call it the k-tron top series that they used to csr was it

k-tron csr was me and uh nasher john hamam went to spar yeah never been to spar before

of course it was raining it just think what the hell am i doing here you know not driving the car

before we've not tested jethro was supposed to do it and then didn't get his license graded in time

so nasher jumped him and it was that's a proper slipstream race at spar with k-trooms as well

isn't it so you don't want to be you want to be like third or fourth on the last lap i think with

k-tron certainly there if you have the luxury of that choice oh that's reminding me we went

roger and i went there with um hurricanes oh the hurricane trafeo yeah got t-band at the chicane i did

i'd forgotten you've done that yeah so would i that's that's the fastest single make championship

wasn't it super trofeo yeah it was like 160 and now it's something like yeah wow crikey it was proper

so i think the mclaren artira trophy now claims to be the fastest one make

series i think they all go fast at one circuit yeah i think those the sort of mclaren ones i don't

know why that you're not you're not really on a you want to race fill with other stuff i think you

are now it used to be a mclaren bubble so the round i did when it was the 570 gt4 car that was

mclaren had hired silverstone exclusively yeah pure mclaren stuff more of a customer experience

yeah yeah and it was full of stuff going on on track yeah yeah they're sort of high end track

day stuff of p1 gtrs and stuff and old formula one cars that's a better way of doing it when

you're getting punters to pay for cars to put them on the grid rather than paying for the whole

grid yourself yeah that was her yeah yeah which makes sense yeah that must be the craziest one

make series ever was it for unsold jaguar xj220s next day or 15 15 was one series yeah and then

they did that weird 220 thing with like al answer and all kind of indie driver was it a massive

money cash prize or something yeah it's like a million was it a million dollars a race or something

but they just kept crashing into them yeah yeah it was my definition derby wasn't it

blinded by the dollar signs that were spinning into their eyes xjr 15 looked

really tricky really tricky i remember that was a grand prix that was on pre i can remember in the

old configuration so bridge which was an amazing corner look it up kids um it was a great corner

but seeing those cars go through there they look they look like right on a knife edge to get through

the corner and and they were still gathering up when they need to be on the brakes to turn

letting that hard left into into the side of the luffield complex yeah yeah it was a great

business model from tom walkinshaw wasn't it because he probably made more money selling

parts and spares yeah rebuilding them than um yeah yes then he did set in the cast of the

teams in the first place well same as m1 wasn't it m1 m1 pro yeah that that was um i think there was

such a car took so long to get into production and they'd been developing the race car and then the

regs changed before they could race it so they they ended up racing them as pro cars but that

that always like seeing those things going around monaco or somewhere looks yeah there's always

monocles in where you see the you think how did they yeah and then you look at modern f1 cars

they get actually they look quite small yeah yeah but they they that's one of the one makes where

you still see those cars around they still yeah and i put classic meetings yeah they're still in

circuit yeah i know the 220s not so much yeah no that was a weird weird one the 220s i spoke to

john watson once about the m1 pro car thing because i didn't you kind of see is this amazing

one high profile all all the drivers and a few drivers outside of formula one

and i sort of asked him what it was all about and what the what the f1 drivers thought about it at

the time whether they were into it or not and it was quite he just well a few of us had to do it

a few of us thought it was a bit of like like make a bit of a bit of money but all all of that

seemed quite i think nicky lauda was the one they took it really like he what he wants in the race

seriously yeah funnily enough he he kind of approached it as you imagine him approaching

everything yeah and he won it and the others probably just rocked up and took the money thought

they'd have a bit of a go and i think some of the prep was some of the teams were were very very good

and others weren't quite so diligent but it's funny to see the other side of something that's

held up as a yeah shining comic series yeah iconic race series and then they were like well i suppose

you're yeah i have to do it so keep a sponsor yeah there's been some weird ones i hasn't there

we did um we both did janettas yeah that was performance car days was it

six yeah 95 or 96 six probably i think that was the first year of it and there was this

optimization of the cars thing started to come in because um if you think back to the time it was

really tough times for janetta so they worked out that it was quite an easy way to build some

cars not to make some money but to keep the company going and raise its profile to make these

little g-27s race cars but the prep was you know you could take it you could take it away well we

ran it as a long term i didn't we so we were smoking around in it i think i drove week to week and then

we'd sort of turn up and they'd put some air in the tires and feeling the tank and then we'd race

it wouldn't we would use the orange car greens we drove it my first mag i worked on performance

for first year joined in the may time or early dream we went to limon that summer and the editor

at the time thought it'd be a good idea to take the g-27 race car because it was registered yeah

and had a forward engine yeah um did you get to limon yes because i went in a v6 one day

i know vector raster vector right yeah we got onto that um but yeah it was a

for a company that had no money they seemed to have but then it's that always that thing

isn't it you just want to keep things going while you're waiting for they were good fun to drive

and they're still still running to that basic fun like front engine rear drive and road tires

and i'm okay like something like that didn't there was a spare car as well because Emma drove one

at your yeah my uh then future wife now wife that was her first her first ever race was

g-27 at mallory park i was um thoughtfully i was on a i was going to say safari it was a it was a

i went to went to a nissan premier alone in south africa and a safari broke out that the

we had like four-day safari anyway um so i wasn't there through i was all of your experience i wasn't

there and it was um it was one of those like horrendously wet weekends where all the sporting

events were canceled but they went ahead with racing yeah genetic park um and i think the

windscreen wipers fell off oh for him she didn't finish last which no that's always the key thing

absolutely do not finish the one goal yeah um yeah yeah we we our joint points because we did

separately so yeah we did all right didn't we yeah i think we would have won the championship

what's the weirdest one though you've mentioned it like weirdest one i've watched was you in a

vector vr6 was it vector v6 there was a thruxton challenge that was that was a toka package yeah

so i did i think i did half a season in that that wasn't that long after the

vento yeah stuff and they were a little bit more was msd msd built those yeah because they built a

road car is it compressed compressed natural gas proud uh no they did build one with with that but

no they were i think i raced that one they were petrol again they they were they were very i think

any front wheel drive raced car particularly when it's still quite closely you know they're

welded in cages and much better dampers and bigger brakes but essentially they were the same

the same shell and the fundamentals as the road car and then so they're consequently they never

really worked particularly well as a as a way or you can't you can't drive it like you can jump in

patreon or you can jump in a janitor and you kind of drive it on instinct and a lot of the front

wheel drive stuff seems very kind of drive by rote and and technique and experience and

understanding the tires and not it's sort of management all the time i think the people that

go really well in those cars just understand they have the discipline same like you were saying with

with the mark hails or those guys in the tuskings they weren't yeah they weren't there to have fun

they were there to go as quickly as they can almost so they were very

disciplined to the nicolader approach and get the best out of the tires but yeah i the i did i think

it was the compressed natural gas car that i drove and it just felt like gutless at high revs

and i complained to them so i checked it out it seems all right

their transpires haven't come in nearly last but the previous event that it taken part the

guest driver had stuffed it into the tires they'd repaired it all but they hadn't noticed that

half of the air intake had gone up the air intake oh so it's properly restricted

yeah oops so that was good excuse john it's not much well it's not much well except that i drove

that vector but on the road they built a road car oh they did didn't they yeah um which i think you

drove to thruxton and we were due to get it with the brakes and dampers uh afterwards it was

whines and it is white and it's all stripped out it was quite a cool thing yeah well the

venture of course was winning btcc wasn't it so it's cooler than it might have been other

months yeah some weird cars all these one make series has allowed manufacturers on it to throw in

which car do you want to push on which is the most important one so that's yeah and then you

look at vento or vector it doesn't really work yeah there's a race car um i did a one off in a

cirrocco which was for a championship that was run mostly in germany it came to the uk so that

became the tt cup which dickey and i did later before that it was the vw lupo cup speaking of

weird racing cars so yeah it's yeah lupo i can see yeah but that was quite interesting because

it was um you had push to pass yeah yeah tt cup had that as well yeah but uh at brands pushed a crash

i think it tends to spin too much they uh folks work i had had a lot of big name drivers over to do

there was like mark blendel and perry mccarty and people like that with racing rundle rundle

um derrick bell i remember those three because brundle absolutely nailed it i think he was the

third or so right and blendel did quite well as well but there was a guy i was competing as a

sort of celeb pr sort of nominee and there was another guy i think from one of the sunday papers

one of the sunday mags who'd never done a race before and derrick bell was so out of sorts i

think he's just flown back from america he's so out of sorts this guy beat him so derrick was

like oh what's going on so this guy he'd never raced before beat him in the saracos because

yeah that was a strange weekend johnny herbert was there as well i guess i thought johnny herbert

was in that race with you yeah or racing on the same weekend at least yeah so yeah that was a weird

one did you do the maserati race that turned into a massive crash fest at silveston uh that was um

yeah that was through perelli so that was the vb8 maserati

trafeo so it was a 4200 gt but the one make spec car so yeah i think that was all a bit

weird i was doing quite well and then somebody then you weren't doing quite so well they

lost it into the veil and then i think they've gone around so many times they set off the wrong way

the wrong way just so he had a head on head on crash and my car caught fire i think

and then uh i think they maybe stopped i don't know whether they i think they stopped the race

and counted back so um vicky butl henderson and matthew marsh were sharing the other car

and i think they hadn't done their pit stop and they counted back and they were leading the race

so they won the race so vicky was the last woman or the yeah if some weird one of those

weird motorsport records where it was it was some woman that had won a grand prix for maserati

in the 1950s or something was the last time a yeah a female racing driver had won a uh

what's class an international race in the right in the maserati wow what but the good thing to come

out of that which jethro will always hate me for because he should have been doing the race but i

don't think he had his again didn't have an international race license i then got to do the

nerburgring 24 hour in the maserati the following year if only the nerburgring 24 hour was a similar

weekend each year then jethro wooden every year would not have his license and see if he can

claim one expense so that was i think the the race at silvestone was 2005 and the nerburgring was

2006 so it was in the same they basically built the car to that spec for the when you're at the end

it was on your teammates isn't it uh shackler feet yes shackler feet he was a dude

yeah i used to be his dude but yeah he was a very cool dude didn't want to drive at night

you see lights are a sheet so yeah so jack went to bed and then came came back and joined us in

the morning but yeah that was an awesome but they hadn't i hadn't set any of the lights up

i was they were just pointing and yeah so they were because normally you

glass them so you get the curves so it was just like streetcar lights pointing in the

straight ahead but um yeah i then i did another maserati like the newer maserati

trefoil like brand's hatch that was a much harder car to drive because they didn't have abs

brakes but there was no there's so little feel in the brakes that they had like lock up

lights on right just to live so you knew that you yeah lock the fronts up and and you had

it's all that was world touring car championship sport racing brands on the gp circuit so you're

limited to the tire you run so you i think you got a set of tires for practice but then you had

a set of tires for each doubleheader race so you raced on the tires you qualified on for that

particular thing so there was a there was a maserati factory driver there alessandro

percredi yeah he's gone on yeah he's won them on for Ferrari yeah but he was so annoying he was

so good and he the car so well yes he put the tires on bring the tires in do a lap

park it and he was on pole right i'd be hammering this is the lap

i love for the wearing thing just completely like again got on quite well but didn't have any

tires left and then he just disappeared he did that race one race two i think i was second in

both races but i mean so it was like it was a really hard car to drive yeah because he literally

could be fully locked up and you didn't know you maybe smell it before you felt it so again there

were some limitations in the car because they couldn't obviously couldn't run with a road car abs

but they weren't going to spend the money to put the motorsport abs on them but it's just all the

little thing because you need to learn i suppose i think the try i think well we did karara cup

we don't yeah that was oh three three that's when you know Porsche PR

budget so it's two guest cars wow we didn't do the same race did we sound so dangerous

can you imagine well it put me in it i just mean with two competitive journalists that was great

well it was seemed to be a journalist and then they said have a co-driver the horses of junior

drive actually driver or yeah someone from another series to keep i think to keep us apart

like i only did that with tt cup didn't they they'd have a pro driver and a journalist so i did

it with uh pierce maserati at silverstone you with patrick long pat along sneterton sneterton yeah

that was johnny cocker was like an embryo at that point wasn't he was about 12 years old no he was

what was he 16 he was 16 yeah he went on to win then he was pretty easy he's a year actually later

but yeah i decided to mention Dave picnic because he was in my race oh yeah and it started raining

in the assembly actually for everyone on wets apart from david no i'll go on slicks and because

it started to dry he goes it's only a shower i know silverstone i know what is blowing in it

will blow out it by the time we come out of here form up it will be dry and he was absolutely right

up until the point about halfway through the race when it started raining oh no and he

haven't gone past everyone from the back anyway he then became a bit of a mobile chicane um

but that was so that was a series where you had drivers who knew exactly what they were doing and

then yeah the rest of us they were they were really exciting cars actually because they

were still h pattern yeah so it was the gen 2 1963 wasn't it yeah so it still had h pattern

but they had abs and i can remember so the corner at the end of the straight at sneterton

it's like quite a the left deep leathered hand they're into a tighter right isn't it yeah and you

could brad never driven anything like it into one more where you'd just break where you'd normally

turn in well and break it all the way to the to the ap is but all the while you had to downshifting

it as well and they were it was quite a tricky gear shift yeah so it was quite easy to get the wrong

gear and yeah buzz it if you took the little rubber splitter off the front it would just have no

front grip so you couldn't go and they ran them really low so if you ran wide or hit a curvy

take that off and then you were you were done you were done pretty much but they were mega

thing yeah we did a whole day's test at snet and to your point of you're looking at they're run by

Paul robe at par motorsport you had full access to data ran through and it's not great now you

don't need to break there you need to be and you're like i'm trying to get your head around

this whole this car that was his car is the same car as mine so why can't i go as quick of course

there's years of talent and ability but you could actually build yourself up which i think makes

the difference in those series the data is so helpful but you have to have the confidence in

the car to push yourself you can push the car as hard as you want you get to Creracut now and you

see i mean we thought Johnny Cocker was younger now we even seem to be younger than him and i think

the cars are much more like with paddle shift or sequential shift and there's like any race car

there's less room to mess things up deal or break a car so i think everything's that much

closer yeah the opposite end of that scale i did the just occurred to me i did the i bet my

opposite end of the scale is more opposite than yours well i think only in this two two liter cup

Porsche story oh mine was also a race and boxer engine but they're amazing things i mean there's

if you if you just judge cars by lap time then they're very you won't spend more money to

achieve a slower lap time but they're amazing cars and they're just they're all sort of

short wheelbase so early early 911s with a two liter engine and they're about 200 horsepower

and yeah that 200 horsepower costs you an awful lot of money yeah i think that the cars are about

300 grand and the engine's probably third of that yeah so it's big big boys toys but they're so nice

to drive so much fun to drive and you see them i'd race one at spa and one at poury car but you

watch them at spa get completely distracted because you're watching all these cars right you look in

front of you and they're just swinging through the corner then you look behind you and they're

doing the same and you're they're they're so much fun yeah really really good fun but ultra ultra

close yeah yeah racing again because you've got like um Mike Jordan Mike and Andrew Jordan's

team preparing cars and you've got historical and you've got max pay all you're really really good

guys and then the guys that are driving them have probably come from modern sports and they're a

little bit older and they've just got a portfolio of historic cars but i love that i think that's

probably my single favorite one make stuff because it combines all the best bits of all the other

you haven't raced a two cv i'm on delo path for 24 hours haven't held no well that's super

competitive isn't it yeah and that they they were cars that were optimized when you're changing

into top and you've been in top for quite some time one comes past you and it changes into top

they've either fits the five-speed gearbox the two cv yeah yeah yeah yeah um yeah that was yeah

that was i mean we first they started at mondello part for the 24 hour race and then it went to

sneterton and the first year we were at sneterton we were six well we're technically seven abreast

but one of the cars wasn't on the surface on the grass and it didn't seem to slow it down

down the back straight because that was the only you just had to get into that corner you were just

describing for the crara cup you had to get into that corner first otherwise you were six cars

they developed the two cv driving over plowed fields didn't they yeah there we go yeah it was

absurd that's scorching hot and the guy i ran the who sort of built the car and we drove with

was attention to detail looked amazing so we had no windows and i got out of the i did the first

stint and got out and just went into the garage to get the cutter to cut hold in the winter said

otherwise we're just going to pass out and he was just mortified that i'd cut a hole in the

window and then went around the back and did the same to get so okay because it was just like

another and you can just think we're going to race all evening as it gets hotter and hotter at

quite a slow pace we need as much air as possible um but yeah that's really anything the slower you

go the more competitive it is because you just take more risks yeah basically um you sort of have

more of a higher car attitude to what spoke to someone who'd done that race and they said you

wanted to be the the last person to turn the headlights on and the first to turn the headlights

off because the headlights yeah yeah yeah yeah significant percentage of horsepower when i

i said the year one year i did at snap richard hamann was in a car richard tipper was in

yeah his racing one annan gow bosses btcc post performance yeah

um but yeah loads of people came they interestingly a lot of people did it once

but yeah it was i think one i think one makes stuff is if like in in racing terms if you if

you weren't super serious or didn't have the opportunity to do karting then i think one

mate racing is it's like your preparation because you learn your race craft and and you

understand how to be very close to other cars and i think that the people that have done very well

in one makes if they've had the opportunity to go on to racing you know multi mark formulas they

always seem to do well nick tally you did yeah queracup yeah i'll reach a well which was here

as well wasn't he and still is but um yeah you look at the names who do whether it's queracup

supercup or frary challenge the the pro but it's like the guys that have i get we said before that

that used to beat them or be on the podium that just disappeared never did anything else no it's

like those drivers that beat and center in whatever and they they never went anywhere but i think

there's yeah there's been some brilliant drivers in one way that never has never got the recognition

they no they deserved i think the catering is probably my favorite and it's just such a

sweet car to drive whatever circuit you are on it's just good fun and they pick they're clever

on because they pick the calendar to suit the car there's no point catering going to taking the

international sort of grand prix circuit at silverstone no because they just get lost weren't

they to you know you need to have a circuit that suits the car they do you race on silverstone

grand prix circuit yes but that's what they tend to have sort of 60 cars don't they for more cars to

yeah i don't know he's um i was i was supposed to race against uh Nigel Mansell in the tuscan

the last race of the season really yeah he had a he had a red car sponsored by harrods number five

red five but that was the oh was that the the year when tiff helped him off yeah tiff helped him

into the bridge yeah yeah what a shame that would have been awesome yeah i've still got a program

it's drawn on clean knobs and it's what did he put down as his own address would have been on

a man then wouldn't it no it wasn't he was somewhere in america so but yeah he was on the same bill

we've got to race in there he never got to see how quick he really was yeah i could have

finished behind him is what car then would we want to see a one a one make series based on

you know a proper support package i reckon alpha julia quadrifoglio make it like a sort of

thundersport saloon car no no wing two laps would it all the outside front tire yeah that'd be great

if you could send one of those up for you yeah i think that'd be really cool that would be proper

wouldn't it i think the crowds love the cars that they can see moving yeah and working and

something that's balanced but yeah normal looking noise as well yeah the noise is always

yeah normal looking car helps doesn't it it's that yeah oh i've got one of those yeah i've seen one of

those yeah yeah what about for you john and you were talking about the it's in america is it the

my ita yeah let me have to cut that it's so close wait is that way to lose 30 cars or is that one

car yeah it's just one continuous yeah yeah it's no wonder then the standard road car is fantastic

to drive so the race cars aren't going to be yeah no they're not over burdened with grip yeah and

they're obviously really well policed so that they're all identical yeah yeah this president

swap cars before the race you know you get yeah however what your car's going to be so that's a

very good championship but yeah anything that's anything that's overpowered and undetired always

makes for a good series right yeah tires are the key aren't they i don't know i'm thinking like i know

there's an alpine a110 yeah the european series but i'd almost prefer them to be on street tires

still because they're they're much looser aren't they yeah but i think the um the more relatable

they are particularly there's a support race because you've got all the slicks and links

if i downforce stuff haven't you yeah you want the fun don't you you want the

crowd pleases otherwise i don't know i think um whenever there's a mini only race at goodwood

that mini could oh yeah that's always amazing to watch stunning yeah absolutely amazing yeah things

and yeah drive like nothing else and then everyone loves them and they're so close and

you can change position so many so many times around a lap i think people through a corner

yeah exactly i think that's what people love isn't it it's a closely matched

raceable cars where you can improvise and take different lines yeah i think it's sort of humble

having said not all front wheel drive cars are suited but no i think they're small like

front wheel drive cars seem to do well don't they because they are more manoeuvrable and

they don't take up that much track as well yeah got more potential for side-by-side racing

i can't believe you haven't mentioned the clear v6 one make series cars that perhaps should have

yes as long as we had to come on to it absolutely terrifying that was you we were we were did you

go on the launch as well no i didn't that was the first couple of issues of either yeah they

they flew a sarcoma and the name of the track now is a little little squiggly

tester at their john ragnotti and then there was a bunch of vuk journalists and i've and they had

probably five or six cars that we could go out in at any one time and and i swear at one point

every single car was in the different part of the spin at the same time it was they were

so hard to drive yeah because you had about that much lock so you saw oh it's okay don't

you hit the lock stops and then it would just just go around and quite stiff and even ragnotti

spun it didn't they yeah we found juk video they've got some footage haven't they we found it earlier

on yeah on the went down a youtube rubber hold earlier racing a moniker i think oh they look

quite intact and then it you look down the side of all of the cars they'd all been pushed into

the battery at some point one side they're immaculate and the other side they were all just

staved in just see that's just the wrong sort of entertainment in the end yeah yeah yeah the

wrong car to go one make racing into an all the hard thing to race i would think yes if you could

drive if you could compete in one one make race what would it be again what happened behind me

i think tuskens that sounds pretty amazing yeah wherever you go where did we go we didn't

did the throxton thank goodness that always looked terrifying tusken around but totally

but we did silverstone

yeah we did cadwell park as well in fact i drove the boxhall caterham of our friend

bp sponsored yeah what's his name Steve parish yeah he was away for that weekend i'd end up driving

our tusken and that caterham at the same meeting and finished 10th in both races with almost

exactly the same lap i was going to say the lap times were probably quite similar weren't they

because those voxel caterhams were super quick yes you know that 500 kilos and that was the same

power to weight ratio i think tusken's slightly more but obviously around there it's a big car at

times yeah i don't know all that i always wanted to have a go in a tusken and never did so i'd

probably love to have a go in a tusken otherwise caterham i think i know it's a predictable answer

but whichever class and actually i think i'd probably want a more of a road sporty one then

yeah yeah i think something on slicks something on barn tires because i think they're just the pure

just like the exactly like the all the appeal that the road car has it's exactly the same

but yeah in a track environment with everyone like slightly not and racing really close and taking

each other cycle wings off yeah all the cycle wings littering the track just a bit of overglades

sowing off everywhere um but yeah hard to beat a caterham i think it doesn't matter where you're

on the grid either yeah it's battling all the way through because of the slipstream factor like you

mentioned you can't make a break you can't get away someone gets towed along yeah they are that i

think that comes into it isn't it as long as there's as soon as you got one make series where it

spreads out on the first two laps i found qualifying really hard the one caterham round i did because

you need a tow so i did it yeah donnington park and a tow was worth six or seven tenths a lap i think

so if you didn't have a tow that's it you and the people who have been racing all year if they saw

you in the mirrors they just back off yeah they'd go through the pit lane they'd give themselves a

drive-through penalty go through the pit lane and you'd be like oh no and then you'd start start

your lap with no tow behind you yeah exactly so you're like driver i can't reform you to one car

yeah actually yeah what about you jose back in the radical or yeah i kind of had rooms i kind of had

my dream come true moment because yeah i did the radical s1 cut back in 2016 and it's it's the most

fun vehicle i've ever driven it was so drivable and really tail happy but really controllable and

high revving and and then yeah about two years ago they brought out a new version of the car and

i got a last minute invitation to go back and do a round again and then it was on the toka bill so

we were supporting ptcc and that was so i was a yeah a bit of a dream country so i think if a genie

had popped up definitely one one of my wishes would have been that so i've been very lucky to

do that again good stuff right shall we end that one there yeah um so thank you very much um

we will be at various rounds with craire cup this year um so they're on the package still they're

on still on the tow package um if you can't make it's on itv4 i think the whole day isn't it all

um so yeah mix for everyone so thank you for joining us james thanks you to have you back yeah

thank you um we'll see you all next time

0:00

89:25

The ultimate one-make racing series, a Maserati on fire & new Nürburgring record | Episode 45

overtake

Renault Twingo

Hyundai

BYD

WLTP

DVLA

Renault Sport

USP is going to be its affordability

economies of scale

OEM tyres

winter tyre

all season tyres

summer tyre

channels for clearing water

compound

Cormoran

wet braking

Michelin

Nürburgring

EV

Prodrive

one-make racing

arrive and drive series

parachuted in

pit straight

practice and qualifying

BTCC

incentivize the winner

front engine rear drive

compressed natural gas

welded in cages

push to pass

slicks

wets

About this episode

Original notes