Brunel at the Castle Combe Autumn Classic

The event of the year.At last, we’re off.The Castle Combe Autumn Classic was ON.There was a packed schedule of classic racing with Formula 3, Minis, Jaguars, various others and my favourite the GT&Sports Cars Cup race which included a TR4, Austin Healeys, Jaguars, and Lotus (in the interests of journalistic accuracy I actually looked up the plural of Lotus (that’s lockdown for you) and found a Press Release from the Lotus press office who say the term to use for the plural of Lotus is Lotus, they do not like Loti or Lotuses.Back to the point.We set up a Brunel Group booking and soon had members from other groups asking to piggyback on our booking, which is fine, we are all in the same car club.So, when the closing day for tickets came, we had 21 cars and 30 members from Brunel Group, Devon Group, North London Group, Chiltern Group, and Somerset Triumphs all signed up.Then, the second phase of COVID came, Motorsport UK applied more precautions, and Castle Combe issued the constraints we would need to abide by.It was all very understandable, appropriate, and for our own good of course, but quite disappointing, nonetheless.We could not access the café, we could not access the paddocks, we could not walk the perimeter of the circuit, all on top of the general rule of 6, masks, etc.At that point it looked as if about half the ticket holders had decided to pull out.Then to cap it all storm Alex came along causing more members to pull out or turn back, and as I was one of the no shows (see Technical Talk) the photo lacks our normal TR Register flag and the inaugural display of our new bunting.So, in the end 5 TRs made it to the circuit and braved the elements.At least there was some racing to be seen on the Saturday, unlike Sunday when after 3 track inspections the event was called off without a single car making it on track.