About Us…
Apache
(March) 86S Sports 2000
Trevor Willard…a bit of my background!
Trevor Willard…a
bit of my background!
By trade I am a qualified motor vehicle technician. I’ve spent most of my working career to date
within the Motor Industry. Starting out
as a heavy goods vehicle technician working for various franchised main dealers
and independent operators, then self-employed running my own garage
maintaining, repairing, servicing cars and light commercial vehicles. Following on from this, I progressed into the
administration side of the industry, again with franchised main dealers, from
Service Advisor and onto Service Management.
I am currently working as a Regional Manager with one of the world’s
largest motor manufacturers. I’ve done a
lot more besides, but that’s another story!
Motor Sport…
I’ve been involved
in Motor Sport for many years now, in fact more than I would care to admit,
from competing in Hill Climbs and Sprints, to organising, officiating and
running MSA Speed events. I’ve always
previously prepared my own competition cars (and since learnt the lessons) and
whilst self-employed I specialised in competition preparation and building
Rover V8 engines to order from road to full race specification. Since 1994 I’ve been involved in some form or
other with Track Days, primarily at Goodwood Motor Racing Circuit. Initially, I assisted in running Track Days
in an effort to attract newcomers into Club level Motor Sport. That obviously didn’t work for all sorts of
reasons, but we discovered there was considerable interest in Track Days from
all kinds of people in different walks of life!
From the would-be racing drivers who could never afford to go racing, to
professional businessmen and women who owned some very nice machinery but could
never find the time to actually go racing and just wanted the opportunity to
put their cars and themselves through their paces!
I then started to run regular Track Days at Goodwood, but as a hobby
(often a very expensive one), not a business!
Over the more recent years we’ve seen a boom in this small industry, in
the form of more corporate events to individual companies trading as Track Day
Operators! I still only did it for the
fun, on the day that is! The rest is
history! Check out Circuit Driver
(formerly Circuit News) under 'links'
Future Plans…
TR7-V8 at Pestalozzi Speed Hill Climb – August 2001
I have always wanted to compete at a national level in Motor Racing and planed
on racing in Sports 2000 before I got too old!
I sold the TR7-V8 (used for Sprints, Hill Climbs and Track Days as
pictured above), with van loads of spares!
Of course, I am sorry to see the TR go along with everything else, but
life goes on and there is a good chance we will see the car in action again in
the hands of its new owner!
Sports 2000 Racing…
As I mentioned above, I’d been
planning to race in Sports 2000, hopefully starting some time in 2002! I’d spent plenty of time during 2001 looking
into various racing series and the only one that stood out amongst the crowd was
Sports 2000. Having studied the market
and looked at several cars throughout the UK, I purchased my Sports 2000 race
car, an Apache (March) 86S with some very striking bodywork, the only one of
its kind in the UK and one of only three (to our knowledge) ever produced, see
the photo’s below. The Sports 2000
Championship could offer everything I was looking for…
|
·
Friendly club ·
Mature level headed racers ·
Camaraderie ·
Technical information ·
Cars that are reliable and easy to maintain ·
Very close racing Check
out their web site: Sports 2000 |
|
I did race my Apache (March) 86S in
the Sports 2000 Championships from 2002 through 2004, culminating in my first ever
attempt at competing in a full Championship!
In 2004 I competed in 6 out of 8 rounds, finished 5 races, failed to
finish 1 race and did not qualify for 2 races for technical reasons! As far as the 2004 Sports 2000 Championship
results are concerned, I finished =35 out of 53 overall and in Class B, I
finished 7 out of 16, not a bad result after all things considered…
- I was only
competing for the fun of it!
- I was on a
‘very’ limited budget!!!
- Unlike most
of my competitive colleagues, I chose not to participate in the Pro-Sport
Invitation Class. This effectively
left me at a slight disadvantage because I did not benefit from an
additional qualifying session!
- I was unable
to complete any form of pre-race or other testing!
- My driving
was conservative to put it politely, in an effort to minimize any risk of
damage, the objective being to simply finish the race!
However, I did find it very difficult to find the time to prepare and
maintain the car during the season, this was due to business and family
commitments etc. There is a lot to be
said for having your car run by a team, if you can afford it that is? As for the future, the car was repaired
following a clutch failure in the last race at Brands, then subsequently
overhauled and received some much needed care and attention to the bodywork
with a full re-spray during the summer of 2005.
The race car, trailer and all of the associated equipment was sold to
other Sports 2000 competitors by July 2005.
I will not give up racing! I’ll
possibly look at buying another car in due course or even hire a car for the
odd race? Though it has to be said, I
had a fantastic time racing in Sports 2000, it is the best racing in its class
and in my humble opinion, the pinnacle of Club level Motor Sport.
Apache (March) 86S Sports 2000
TWR Ultima GTR…
Having sold the March 86S Sports 2000,
trailer and everything that went with it in 2005, I had to wait a while before
acquiring another car as intended of course!
The reason I had to wait was because we were building a rather large
extension at home? Thankfully, that is
now complete all bar a few minor jobs as one would expect, so I’d been looking
for another car to buy from late 2006 to March 2007. I wanted a car that was road legal but very
capable on track and could realistically be driven to and from an event, saving
the need for a trailer and tow vehicle!
Having searched the web, considered anything and everything, I finally
narrowed it down to two specific makes and models… the Noble GTO3 and the
Ultima GTR! The Noble is a great car,
but rather modern in terms of technology e.g. fuel injection, ECU and twin
turbo etc. In addition, the Noble tends
to fall in residual value very quickly! Whereas
the Ultima GTR is the extreme Supercar with 70’s American muscle technology and
‘should’ prove relatively easy to maintain and run! Not to mention the fact that the Ultima’s
tend to hold their residual value rather well!
It goes without saying then… it had to be an Ultima GTR. Click on TWR Ultima GTR to find out more about our
latest acquisition.