DOWN THE PUB WITH JULIAN THOMAS
Age: 47 Lives: Buckingham E-type sensation
He raced once in FF1600
“I tried racing when I was 21 and bought a Formula Ford Royale RP33M and entered one race. I qualified second to last and took the leaders out as they lapped me and wrote the car off. I thought ‘no talent, no money, I’ll stick to electronics.”
VBOX is his company
“I’m an electronics and computer geek. I began selling products into the motor sport industry and I spent so many days at tracks that I decided I’d got to give it another go. I’d done some karting and my salesman at the time was quicker than me and I wanted to work out why. That was what started VBOX, the data-logger system.”
He races in the Fun Cup
“I started in the Fun Cup, which is just fantastic. It has got a tremendous range of drivers in it and it is relatively affordable. But I’ve always loved classic cars and my dad had classic cars so we used to go to Silverstone to watch them.”
The E-type arrived in time for 2015
“The moment I could almost afford it, and convinced my longsuffering wife Jane, I bought a Jaguar E-type. That was for the start of last season. I bought the car from Jeremy Welch and last year was about getting used to the car and it took me a while to adjust from a Fun Cup Beetle, with a single-seater format, paddle-shift and 130bhp to a 380bhp E-type running on cross-ply tyres. It was very eye-opening.”
He now races both cars
“The E-type suits my driving style as I like no grip! I’m still racing in the Fun Cup for my sixth season and I’ve won it four years in a row. The E-type fits around that, so we’re doing a variety of races and there is no lack of races you can enter with the E-type.”
He has a classic Aston
“I tracked down my dad’s old Aston Martin DB6, which I helped him restore. My mum had to sell it when dad died 25 years ago. Last year a friend of mine asked me what car I’d buy if I could and I said it would be my dad’s old car. So I Googled it just to show him and it was in a Bonham’s auction two days later by pure coincidence and I just had to bid for it.”