Blu Tack. 

Some nights racing runs smoothly, on others it suffers a few delays, but this week’s NSR F1 event easily won the prize for the most drawn-out slog of the year. It was good-humoured fun for sure, but it took an age to finish.

A plethora of crashes, breakages and delays while cars were rebuilt contributed to an extended period of agony for all except the night’s winner, Julian, and even he seemed to have almost lost the will to live by the time the final heat was completed.

The racing started well enough, Julian and Josh battling for the lead for the first few laps of Heat 1, but Josh crashed midway through the heat and pretty much gave up thereafter. The mid-race tea break rejuvenated him a bit and he managed to win Heat 4, but that was as good as it got. A night for him to forget.

Midfield and sharing a car, Terry and Simon tried the unusual tactic of taking a fast car and engineering it throughout the evening to make it worse. Never the quietest of duos, the pair entertained everyone by loudly discussing every flaw their car had and their proposed remedies, one of which was the liberal application of a lump of Blu Tack. Precision engineering this wasn’t.

The Racing Drivers’ Book of Excuses is a staple of motor racing events everywhere, but nobody uses it as amusingly as Terry and Simon do. Apparently their car was “geary”, “tippy” and had both too little and too much grip. As Terry had observed earlier in the evening, the price paid for scrap cars is at a record high. Perhaps the “improvements” being made to theirs were the pair’s attempt at making a few quid.

Josh eventually came to their rescue and suggested that gluing their tyres on might improve matters, even doing it for them, but by then it was too late. Nobody will be surprised if the car turns up next week sporting just three wheels, such was their unrelenting enthusiasm to improve it.

Until now, Team Bryant has been the go-to choice for those wanting someone to build them a decent car, but now there’s competition: ‘Tuned by Reardon & Scott sponsored by Blu Tack’ has a certain ring to it. Don’t laugh…