Fire destroys college’s cars and workshop
A man has been arrested on suspicion of arson after a fire destroyed Bridgwater and Taunton College’s motorsport workshop and a number of cars, including the 2019 Bikesports title-winning Radical PR6.
The blaze, in the early hours of
Thursday last week, was found to have been started deliberately, and gutted two trailers outside the building as well as all the equipment inside. The successful PR6 – known as Poppet – that the college runs for course leader Josh Smith was destroyed, as were three other Radicals run by the students and Smith’s RJ Motorsport squad for customers, plus a number of cars that were used as vehicles for the students to practise working on.
In what has been a tough 12 months for the college, the fire followed the impact of lockdowns on education and a cyber attack.
Smith described the incident as “shocking”. “It’s a massive shame for everyone – there’s been years of work that’s gone into creating that,” he said. “You can go and buy a car that’s similar but they’ve not had the same amount of effort or attention to detail. There was lots of specialist equipment and things we’ve made along the way for a bespoke purpose.”
A Gofundme fundraising page has been set up to support those affected, and has raised over £11,000. Smith added: “We’ll work with our insurance company and see how quickly we can get back to some sort of normal. We’ve had plenty of people who have offered support and loaning us equipment, which is really nice and will help us in the short term.”
Anyone who would like to help support the college can get in contact via the raceteam@btc.ac.uk email address.