Saturday, 11th October – Donington Park
Sorry for the late report!
Saturday saw us heading to Donington Park for the final round of the 750MC Roadsports Championship — wrapping up what’s been my first full season of racing.
First, huge congratulations to the 2025 champions:
🏆 Class A: Simon Mauger / Alan Blencowe (Cupra TCR)
🏆 Class B: Mark Burton (BMW 330ci)
🏆 Class C: Matt Creed (Clio 200)
🏆 Class D: Philip & Matthew Adcock (BMW E36 Compact)
Photo credit Jon Elsey
A Frustrating End
The final race turned out to be a disappointing affair for me. After the race, I had to give myself a big debrief just to reset my emotions.
It’s probably a positive sign that I’m disappointed — it shows how much I care about improving — but it’s tough when your budget is tiny in comparison. Still, I’m proud of how far we’ve come this season and I’m already looking ahead to 2026, where I’m hoping to find partners to join me on the journey and push towards the very front.
Friday: Arrival & Prep
I set off after the kids finished school and headed up north. Being close to East Midlands Airport means plenty of cheap hotels, so I’d booked into a Travelodge just five minutes from the circuit.
Friday night was spent in the local pub with a couple of team members — chatting motorsport, as always!
Saturday Morning – Qualifying
Session: 09:50
Result: P5/13 in class | P32/47 overall
Best lap: 1:51.372
Deleted lap (track limits): 1:50.539 – which would’ve been good enough for three places higher!
It was my first time around Donington, and early in the session I put in what would stand as my best lap — a 1:51.372 — despite having to short-shift to preserve the gearbox. I was avoiding 3rd gear as much as possible, which really hurt top-end speed.
To make matters worse, the car felt unstable under braking — the rear was breaking away every time I hit the pedal. When the session was red-flagged for a nasty BMW crash (thankfully the driver was okay), we checked pressures and found the right-side tyres were 10 psi higher than the left. A simple communication error by the mechanics with each other, but that’s racing — so no fingers pointing from me, we move forward and learn from our experiences. We win and loose as a team.
We was unable to get our normal brake pads for this race one of the strong points of the RX8 is normally it’s braking ability, and we didn’t have that here.
I also had a lap deleted for track limits, even though I saw several drivers going wide in areas not covered by sensors. Frustrating, but I decided to take the “gentleman driver” route and not protest it.
Race – 14:20
Result: P9/13 in class | P25/47 overall
Before the race, we checked over the car and found the air filter was blocked — hoping that was the cause of our power loss.
Starting P5, I was optimistic we could move forward. Off the line, I picked up three places on lap one, but quickly lost two to higher-powered Class B cars. By lap four, I was battling for P4 in class and made the move stick into the final corner.
A safety car came out on lap five for a Ginetta that crashed on the start/finish straight, and the pit window opened. After pitting, I rejoined in P3, but straight-line speed was fading badly. Despite that, I had some great wheel-to-wheel laps defending hard but fair — elbows out but keeping it clean.
Then, disaster struck. Two laps after the restart, the gearbox refused to change gear. I limped back to the pits thinking that was it, but after some “persuasion” from the team, we got gears again! Three laps later I was back out, determined to finish the final round of the season.
Reflections
Not the ending I wanted, but that’s motorsport. It’s been a season of highs and lows, with a fair share of mechanical issues, but the learning curve has been massive.
I’ll take the positives forward, regroup, and come back stronger in 2026. There might even be one more surprise outing before the year’s out — watch this space 👀
Thanks to everyone who’s supported me this season – family, friends, and partners.
Big shout-out to Rarerims for sorting me out with the new 17” wheels and Yokohama A052s at a great price.
Massive shout out to my close friend Andrew Cooper who has provided me with a great website and support at various race tracks
If anyone’s interested in joining the journey as a partner or sponsor for 2026, get in touch — I’d love to have you onboard as we push towards the front!