Watch me race Chris Harris across a field in a 2CV | Thank Frankel it's Friday | GRR
Were this any other year, I would already be in Anglesey, preparing myself for the weekend-long insanity-fest that is the Race of Remembrance. As if the idea of racing for 12 hours around a freezing, invariably soaking and wind-blasted track is not silly enough, there’s always the Biathlon of Foolishness with which to reckon, which the last time I did it involved doing press ups in the Irish Sea. In November.
But that’s not what I’m going to do. Instead I’m going to drive a 2CV across a field.
It’s not much of an alternative I’ll grant you, but needs must when Covid’s in town and it’s simply not possible for any club-level racing to go ahead at the moment. And it’s still for the same good cause: Mission Motorsport which needs financial support now more than ever before. The Race of Remembrance is its major fundraising event of the year and also plays a huge role in getting the charity into the hearts and minds of the public. Having to cancel it this year has set them back to the tune of £50,000.
So how does me driving an old French shed across a field help? Well if you’ve nothing better to do with your time than follow me on social media or, far more likely, Top Gear presenter and Goodwood regular Chris Harris, you may have seen a very short video we made last week announcing that our grudge match, now many years old, is finally to be settled.
It goes like this. I always wanted an old ripple bonnet, 425cc 2CV but couldn’t find one I liked. So instead I bought an old suicide door Fiat 500. Christopher, in the meantime did find a 1957 2CV that fitted the bill so he promptly bought it and proceeded to rub my nose in it every time I turned up to the pub in the Fiat. Which really wouldn’t do.
So I looked a little harder and found a 1958 car that was being restored by Wheeler Dealers. For me it was perfect, so I agreed to go on the programme, pretend I’d just met Mike Brewer instead of having known him for 20 years, and bought the car. It was expensive, but beautiful.
But I knew what would happen next. Because mine was near enough perfect and Chris’s a gloriously shabby wreck I’d receive unrelenting banter about it being an over-restored show queen and the only way to shut him up was to prove mine didn’t just look better than his, it was better too. By which I mean faster. So I secretly installed a later engine with a reputed 17bhp. Which may not sound like much until you consider I’d started with 12bhp and was now a single horsepower off a 50 per cent power upgrade.
Yet on a run back from the pub where nothing more intoxicating than Diet Coke had been consumed, I couldn’t shake him off. I put this down to the smaller rolling radius of his wheels effectively giving him lower gearing, the extreme rustiness of his bodywork which must save many kilos of crucial weight and the fact that he’s about half the size of me. When we’re both on board our cars, I expect my power advantage is almost entirely negated.
But I’m not sure. So we’re going to have a race which, in finest 2CV traditions, will be across a field, and we’re going to sort this thing out for good.
What we would like in return for us filming our idiocy and posting the results, is that you put your hands in your pockets and give whatever you can to a charity that’s not just very close to our hearts but, far more importantly, does incredible things through the medium of motor sport for former service personnel suffering from appalling physical and mental trauma incurred in their heroic efforts to keep up safe. ‘Race, retrain, recover’ is their mantra and they don’t just find a new purpose and often new jobs for their beneficiaries, they save lives too. I’ve seen it happen.
So if you want to watch Chris Harris and me do stupid things in a field with a pair of geriatric 2CVs please visit: uk.virginmoneygiving.com , put ‘Mission Motorsport’ into the search bar and help as much as you can. Many thanks.