JUDGE’S NOTES: JETHRO BOVINGDON
Unsettling events, familiar banter and some truly special cars made ecoty 2021 memorable for Bovingdon
PERHAPS I DREAMT IT. ECOTY 2021. HENCEFORTH TO be known as ‘The one where the Ferrari came last’. And that wasn’t even the strangest thing about the week that very possibly we all imagined. I knew things weren’t right from the very start. It was agreed that we’d meet up in the hotel car park at 8.30am on Day One. People had arrived in dribs and drabs the evening before and I was the last to make it to the hotel, at around midnight. Having landed into Heathrow airport from the US at 9.30am the same day and driven all the way up to wherever the hell it was, I was pretty tired. So, I set my alarm for 8.10am. In the history of evo no shoot has ever commenced at the actual agreed time. Never. Not once. My just-in-time-to-be-15minutes-late strategy was as safe a bet as a Porsche podium at ecoty.
Imagine my dismay, then, when I heard excited voices and laughing and Scooby-doo impressions outside my window at 8.27am. Oh yes, if you ever meet Dickie ask him to do his Scooby-doo impression.
Anyway, what sort of merry hell was this?! It wasn’t even the bloody scheduled time and yet when I peeped through my curtains the entire team was assembled. Even Dickie. Surreal. It set the tone for a frankly unsettling week.
As the days played out there were genuine shocks. And once we’d got over Aston’s trousers (actually, maybe it’ll be remembered as ‘The one when Aston wore those trousers’), many of the contenders were confounding expectations, too. The GT3 wasn’t steamrollering the competition; the Ferrari just didn’t have the incredible control and malleable dynamics that have become such a part of their DNA since the 458 Italia was launched; the little Hyundai wasn’t at all overwhelmed by the roads, the scenery or the competitors with many multiples of its power output; and the heavy, four-wheel-drive BMW with an automatic gearbox was, frankly, astonishing one and all.
Some things were familiar, however. Most notably the stuff you don’t generally see in the mag but which makes ecoty even more enjoyable
as a participant. As if the cars alone weren’t enough… Dickie may be notoriously late in the mornings, but he’s usually bang on time for the bar. His performance in 2021 was sparkling. In fact, everyone was on great form over burgers or steak and a couple of beers. Maybe it was the sheer joy of being out and about and gathering a great bunch of cars together again after so much disruption. Maybe it was just the relief of being free from campervans for a few hours. Whatever the reasons, the atmosphere was like the last day of term before Christmas holidays.
All the best stories came out. John’s percussive 0-60mph attempt in the B Engineering Edonis that lasted about 0.1 seconds and involved a lot of shrapnel (see page 170); Dickie’s death-defying spin in a Koenigsegg that started on a runway in Sweden and ended up somewhere on the Norway/russia border but miraculously caused zero damage; tales of derring-do at Millbrook when we’d figure cars and hit upwards of 150mph with another car doing exactly the same in the oppostie direction with only a painted white line as protection against the 300mph closing speeds; an ecoty that nobody likes to speak about but is internally known as ‘The one where people kept crashing’ (I wasn’t at this one, by the way); that time I found myself teetering on the edge of a large, sheer drop, in an SLS Black Series. And so it went on. It was easy to feel like we’d lived through the greatest period for performance cars already and were heading down the other side, constricted by ever more traffic and ever bigger, heavier cars.
The next morning I wasn’t so sure, though. The Lamborghini’s deafening cold start, outrageously sharp lines and wild aerodynamic devices make many of the old heroes look very tame indeed. Just to see it warming-up and feel the V10 through your feet and up into the pit of your stomach is enough for any fears that the good times are over to vanish. Amplify the drama with a GT3 doing the same right next to it – so wide, low and exuding absolute tension – and all seems very right with the world. And that’s before you turn around to see a little hot hatch shouting for some attention, an Aston Martin with a giant wing on the back and a deep V8 beat spewing out of its exhausts, an evil M5 that literally looks like it could drive through buildings and emerge unscathed and a Honda that seems more extreme than a track special from Ferrari of just a few years ago. Things aren’t so bad, people.
The real stand-outs for me? You never know how things will shake out over varied roads and with ever-changing weather, but I was delighted and relieved that the STO and M5 CS were as good as – or even better – than I’d concluded upon first acquaintance earlier in the year. I’d happily be 15 minutes late to drive either again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.