All Lee’s.

All reigns end eventually, and after 504 days as king of Group 5, Julian’s crown was finally removed this week. Just think about that for a moment. 72 weeks unbeaten in Group 5. 504 days. 43.5 million seconds. If Julian had been driving his Group 5 car around Molesey’s track for all of that time, he’d have covered roughly 5.4 million laps. Yes, that’s a daft statistic that has several flaws if you want to argue them, but either way, being unbeaten in a class for more than a year can only be described as mightily impressive.

Julian won every Group 5 race he contested in 2022, and until this race had remained unbeaten this year too, so Lee’s victory was even more special. It wasn’t a fluke or lucky either, because Julian didn’t relinquish his crown easily. Far from it. Julian was as quick as ever, but as Lee admitted after the race, he’d put a lot of work into building his winning car this week and still had to drive every lap as if it was a qualifying lap. Flat out each and every lap was the only way to put Julian under pressure. It worked. Julian crashed twice, which is almost unheard of and amply demonstrates how hard he was having to drive in his quest to retain his crown. It was a brilliant race.

There were other close battles too; Simon and David for third and Neil, Chris and Terry for fifth, but the only one that really mattered was for the win. Julian will undoubtedly be back to winning form soon, but for now the glory is all Lee’s.