Our Special Correspondent trekked up to Northampton a while back for the Britcar 24…………….he shares some thoughts and a short history lesson………….<\/em><\/p>\n

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Revival of Silverstone 24
\nAlthough 24 hour races have been run since 1905, most of the established examples date from the 1920\u2019s: the Bol d\u2019Or in and around Paris was first run in 1922, Le Mans arrived on the calendar a year later, Spa copied this in 1924 and even Monza tried a race that year as well. Britain wanted to join in also but the only possible location at that time was Brooklands. Unfortunately, noise restrictions imposed by the neighbours\u2019 complaints meant no night racing was allowed at the Surrey track; they resorted to splitting their race, the Double Twelve, into two parts run on consecutive days.
\nIt is not generally realised that the first 24 hour race to be run in the UK was as recent as 1980 when the Willhire event took place at Snetterton. This was a race for production cars and fifteen such events were held at the Norfolk circuit including a 25 hour race in 1989 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the sponsor, the Willhire Vehicles Rental Company, a local car rental firm. The race\u2019s demise was accelerated by the low level of attraction on the Group N saloons and 1994 witnessed the last of these once popular events. In 2003 a 2CV 24 Hour race was the last long\u2013distance at Snetterton to date but the challenge of staging a full 24 hour race in Britain was taken up James Tucker\u2019s Britcar series at Silverstone in 2005. Since then there have been seven further 24 hour races at the Northampton venue including the 2015 event. This latter was officially titled the Dunlop 24 in deference to its generous sponsor.
\nHere are some of the more interesting cars to tackle the round-the-clock event:
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\nGinetta chose to gain more experience with their new LMP3 car which had made its d\u00e9but at Silverstone at the recent ELMS round. It streaked away in the early laps but later suffered various problems which dropped it right down the leader board.
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\nMartin Short\u2019s RollCentre Team entered a potent BMW saloon with a 4-litre V8 engine but the car did not last long, alas!<\/p>\n

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\nThe winning BEECHDEAN GT4 Aston Martin Vantage; 16 year-old Jamie Chadwick was among the successful drivers.
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\nGood to see any Jaguar involved \u2013 this XKR Coup\u00e9 failed to finish.
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\nThis works-entered Aston Martin Vantage finished 5th, driven by CEO Andy Palmer, Design Director Marek Reichmann, journalist Andrew Frankel and GP3 driver Alice Powell.
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\nThe Chevron GR8 made a welcome appearance in the race.
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\nThis Radical RXC is the original chassis. It has an RPE 3-litre V8 and uses a bespoke Quaife 7-speed gearbox. Despite some problems the car won its class.
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\nCor Euser\u2019s team has achieved many successes with his Lotus Evora and this time it reached the podium for its third place.
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\nThis Diesel Jaguar once won its class in the N\u03cbrburgring but lacked success in this race.
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Notice the Ginetta\u2019s number 12 coming off to reveal its ELMS number.<\/p>\n

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It becomes number 2!
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\nThe car at Village Corner proving it is really number 12!
\nTAILPIECE<\/strong>
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\nThis little Ford Fiesta was the smallest car in the 24 hour field.<\/p>\n

Words & images \u00a9 2015 David Blumlein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Special Correspondent trekked up to Northampton a while back for the Britcar 24…………….he shares some thoughts and a short history lesson…………. Revival of Silverstone 24 Although 24 hour races have been run since 1905, most of the established examples date from the 1920\u2019s: the Bol d\u2019Or in and around Paris was first run in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[939],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10962,"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10785\/revisions\/10962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}