26/27th October, Royal Automobile Club Pall Mall Cup-Silverstone GP
Our 1961 Pre 63 GT Jaguar E-type racing in the Pall Mall Cup
At the end of October, the P&K Thornton Racing team competed in the final race of the season, the Royal Automobile Club Pall Mall Cup at Silverstone. After our success at the Spa Six Hours, the team were feeling eager and excited for this 3-hour endurance race in our fastidiously built Jaguar E-Type.
On the Friday before the race the team faced an unexpected issue, the head gasket needed replacing. This job normally takes between a day and a day and a half to complete. However, thanks to a big team effort and the experience of our fantastic technicians we managed to get the head gasket changed in 5 hours. A big well done goes out to the team whose fantastic collaboration skills saw our E-Type making it to the prestigious Motor Racing Legends event.
Our drivers Grant Williams, who is well known for racing classic Jaguar saloons at Goodwood Revival, and our MD, Ciprian Nistorica (Cip), competed in 3 races over the weekend. On Saturday, we competed in the main event, the 3-hour RAC Pall Mall Cup. The qualifying session was highly competitive with another similar spec Jaguar E-Type also competing in our Pre 63 GT class and this was highly motivating for the team. We finished the qualifiers in the 17th position overall, second in our Pre-63 class, a touch behind the other Jaguar E-Type.
Grant started the race as expected and on the hunt. The drivers changed over, then Cip drove for the 2nd hour of the race, and Grant returned for the final hour. In Grant’s first hour of the race, our competition in class started to slow down (for reasons unknown) and had to leave the track for a little while, allowing Grant to overtake them and take the top spot in class for now. Following a swift driver change for our competitors, they returned to the track and started to pick up speed once again and catching.
As per the Pall Mall Cup regulations, the drivers must make a first mandatory pit stop of at least 60 seconds and a second refill pit-stop for a minimum of 5 minutes. One hour in, we took our first pit stop, now with Cip in the driver’s seat, a very smooth stop. For the following 60 minutes, we continued to pump the lap times in and once again we proved to have built a fast and reliable race E-Type as our competitors faltered. Going into the last hour, the team took another pit stop, swopped drivers again to Grant and completed their mandatory re-fuelling pit stop, this was a difficult pit stop and resulted in the team receiving a penalty. Despite this, we got through the race finishing 17th overall and first in our class. A big achievement for our drivers and crew.
We competed in two more races ran on the Sunday. Our 1961 Jaguar E-Type competed in the Dunlop Allstars with Historic Racing Drivers Club where we placed 4th in our class. And later in the afternoon Cip had the upmost pleasure of sharing Grant Williams legendary Jaguar MK2 in a final race, the HRDC Jack Sears. Grant’s Jaguar MK2 JAG400 has been driven by motor racing legends, such as Graham Hill, Jack Sears and Stirling Moss. This was another successful race where came first in our class!
Our 1961 Jaguar E-Type ran for 14 hours in two weeks alone between Spa Six Hours and the Silverstone weekend, a testament to our incredibly thorough race preparation! We are taking some time over the winter period to re-build, ready for the next racing season.
Our reputation as a classic Jaguar race preparer is building based on our 100% reliability, a result of extremely hard work and dedication from our team.
Our endeavours were very gratefully sponsored by 👇
For any classic Jagaur race car build, track support, rolling road tuning and preparation, please contact us via the usual channels
📧 info@thorntonrestorations
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