This has to have been the best weekend of my life. Along with fellow Autocar staffers Steve Sutcliffe and Matt Prior – plus Aston’s Chris Porritt - I’ve had a chance to experience the feeling of spraying champagne from a podium.
Somewhat against expectations, we finished third in the Britcar 24hr race. After Steve qualified our Aston Martin N24 in 20th place we set ourselves what felt like the optimistic target of a top ten finish in the race.
A chaotic start during which the pole sitter spun on the line causing a massive accident meant we picked up a few places, but no one could quite believe it when dawn came and we were in the top five.
Disbelief turned into total uncontained excitement when that looked like fourth with 20 hours gone. And, in a result that went down to the wire, it got even better in the closing stages of the race as, with Steve and Chris doing some blistering laps and the Aston boys doing an amazing job with the fuel stops, we moved up into third and held it to the line.
What a weekend – and what a result. I feel honoured to have been part of it – and I’ll never be able to watch an F1 driver spraying the bubbly from the podium without being reminded of it. Brilliant.