DOWN THE PUB

WITH CALLUM GRANT

“I did the Chateau Impney hillclimb at the weekend in the Formula Junior Merlyn Mk5/7 owned by John Sykes and previously raced by Denis Welch. It’s the first time I’d been to Chateau Impney and I’d never done a hillclimb before. It was my 21st birthday in May and John Sykes rang me and said he was at Le Mans when it was Chateau Impney and he’d bought the entry for me as a birthday present. He said to go for it and it didn’t matter if I damaged his car.”

“It’s a mega challenge but I don’t like waiting around. But when you get to the top of the hill you’ve got a big smile on your face. You don’t know how you got there! I loved it. I had a big battle with Mark and Jack Woodhouse and it was great because we all know each other and we’re all friends. But we all want to win and you’re not going to back out. In the end I won the class.”

He needs to practice his starts “The roundabout is really difficult and the start is hard for me because I’m not normally that good off the start in races. I was about half a second slower off the line than Westie Mitchell.”

Sykes had a win last month “John rang me from Le Mans on Sunday morning and said he had a big scare in the night as he was driving down the Mulsanne Straight and a Lotus Elite burst into flames in front of him. He had a great win in the Merlyn at Cadwell Park last month and he was chuffed to bits as it was his first overall race win. I’ll do the Formula Junior race at the Silverstone Classic in the Merlyn and then Croft the week after. We always race in honour of Denis Welch, who owned the Merlyn before John.”

He may do more hillclimbs “We’ve got an Austin Healey 3000 at home that needs building. It is a road car at the moment but my dad Nigel used to race it. We can’t afford to race it, so we’re planning to hillclimb it. There’s no one else on the track to knock you off and you’ll only have to rebuild it every five years or so.”