Race 9:  Silverstone

The home of UK motorsport became host of Sixth Sense ESP Racing's longest race of the season: the Silverstone Britcar 500. This six hour race provided an extra test as it involved driving into the night!

With one round of the Britcar series remaining, we needed our main challenger to not complete the race. This is because only the points from the best six results count, and Kevin Clarke's BMW had already won five rounds.

Despite the Lotus Motorsport Elise's fragile reputation, we were confident that it could do the distance thanks to the team's engineering efforts over the season. We also had top drivers Rob Barff (Le Mans) and James Barclay (British Touring Cars) to share the drive.

Excluding an early problem with a temperamental ignition coil, the car ran faultlessly throughout testing and despite being mixed with the faster GT cars, the Elise qualified 13th out of 43. With Silverstone having two long straights, it was pleasing to see us just 0.3 seconds behind Kevin Clarke despite having well over 200bhp less than his impressive BMW.

With Rob Barff taking the first stint, it was a nervous affair seeing the little Lotus entering the first corner of the race with 42 other cars jostling for position. We needn't have worried though, as Rob overtook Kevin Clarke and completed a fabulous stint with a peak of 6th overall.

With the sun setting, it became increasingly difficult to see because of the glare, yet mechanically the car soldiered on with little fuss. Our first challenge was perhaps unsurprisingly; the UK weather. Unfortunately, we made a driver change just as the heavens opened, resulting in an additional pit stop.

To make things worse, a stop/go penalty resulted in another unscheduled pit stop. Now we really had a race!

Now 3rd in class, we ultimately knew position was irrelevant as long as Kevin Clarke was in the race. Low and behold, Kevin's BMW shortly after retired with his engine expiring. The question was, had it done enough laps to be classifed?

Despite un-lapping ourselves with a storming last stint, it turned out to be a fruitless effort to achieve 10th. With the BMW classified, we will now be fighting for 2nd place in the last round at Brands Hatch.