Garth Hill Blazers at Castle Combe

The Garth Hill Blazers Green Power racing team took part in their first race of the 2024 season at Castle Combe race track. The race day consisted of two 90 minute races with times achieved going towards qualifying for the grand final in October. The team consists of pupils from Year 10 along with some new recruits from Year 8, who will take over leading the team at the end of this season. We ran both of our cars following modifications and improvements completed during the off-season. Pupils have been working on improving the cooling of the motors, reworking the steering systems and producing a rolling road for testing the cars in the workshop.

We arrived at Castle Combe at 7.30am on Sunday morning with a smaller team than usual as several members were on the art/languages Paris trip. The sun was already shining and it made for excellent racing conditions throughout the day. Our practice session was cut short due to a racing incident but the team was confident when lining up for race one in a 75 car grid - Team captain Riley Armstrong-Bingham and Kieran Cobby taking the first stint. The first race started very well with both cars moving up through the grid and after three laps both cars were in the top 25. Each race has to have three driver changes so after half an hour we pitted the cars and switched drivers. Changes were a little slow but we will practise these further to speed up. The remaining race went smoothly and we finished in 30th and 34th place overall. We had three brand-new drivers so this was a very positive start as they built confidence in racing and got used to the cars.

After a break to change batteries and check over the cars, we lined up for race two. We were slow getting to the track which meant we were nearly at the back of the grid to start the second race. Riley was again lead driver in our newer car and Maya Durrant took the lead for our original car. Our drivers had an excellent first lap with Riley moving up to 15th place and Maya to 38th. After the second lap, we had moved up to 9th and 25th overall and the cars/drivers were performing brilliantly.  This continued with car one moving up another place to 8th and car two to 20th before we started to call the drivers in to change. Then disaster struck! Our lead car had a motor failure with smoke pouring out of the back of the car. A really sad end to the race for a car that would have been pushing for a top 10 finish. Car two remained and Kieran and Dan completed the race well to finish in a very respectable 21st place.

The team performed excellently, supporting each other and passing on important knowledge to the newer members. We are already looking forward to our next race and further improving our overall placing.

The Garth Hill Blazers team at Castle Combe were: Riley Armstrong Bingham (Team captain), Cowan Flavin, Kieran Cobby, Grace Gilbert, Maya Durrant, Daniel Benson and Krisjan Alberts.