Saturday 22 May 2010 saw Tester Engineering’s first track outing of the year, attending the Aston Martin Owner’s Club St John Horsfall Race Meeting at Silverstone. At this meeting the XK Challenge joined in with the Lackford Engineering Austin Healey Championship and our XK120 entered the Jaguar Enthusiast’s race complying with the Invitation Class regulations.

Conditions on the day were perfect, a sunny and dry track, with the action taking place on the National Circuit. Driver Jim Tester had some concerns at the start of the day with the diff set up on the car, which was really for the GP Circuit, and with the tyres, which were an old set that was last used at the Silverstone Classic in August 2009

Qualifying was really a bit of a shakedown for the engine, which had had a rebuild of late. The 17 minutes of the morning session turned out to be relatively easy, making sure all was as it should be and that those tyres were going to last. The session was incident free and traffic was on our side and Jim finished happy with the result of 7th place on the grid overall and the first qualifier of the XK’s by over 2 seconds.

Because of the diff ratio being used it was a little difficult for Jim to make a good start off the line and so with big revs and wheels spinning he set off knowing that he was going to lose some places. Jim dropped to around 9th place but was up to 5th by the end of the first lap. The rest of the 20 minute race was trouble free with just a couple of spinners to avoid.  A fantastic dual took place on the last lap with the Austin Healey Sprite of Patrick Harris and provided a photo-finish style end with Harris pipping Jim to third spot by 0.026 of a second! Well done Patrick!!  Second Jaguar home was the XK120 of Andrew Moore (5th overall) and third was Stephen Skipworth in his XK120 (10th overall).

Next outing is at Brands Hatch this weekend at The Masters Historic Festival at Brands Hatch. We will be taking part in Saturday’s action, the Top Hat Raceday on the Indy circuit. We’d love to see you there!

PS.  How could we resist introducing you to our “mechanic” James Tester Jnr!  And a big thank you to Linzi at www.smartpics.co.uk for the gorgeous picture of Jim in the 120 at the top of this report!