2025 Miata Trophy Round 2 Silverstone GP Review: Consistency amid Chaos

Well its been a while since the Silverstone weekend actually happened and I am only just getting chance to write this up... lifes been coming thick and fast recently, but fortunately theres a bit of a gap before we head to Brands Hatch for round 3 of the Miata Trophy championship on the Grand Prix circuit.

Speaking of Grand Prix circuits, we had the privelidge of driving on the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit this season and we were fortunate enough to be blesses with clear blue skies all weekend making the whole weekend far more enjoyable than the -1 we were seeing at Snetterton!

The weekend itself was a strange weekend, with us testing on the Friday on the International circuit, as Miata Trophy cars seemed to take over a BARC test day, with our sessions filled with Citreon 2CV's and GT3 cars... the speed difference was absolutely bonkers and made clear lapping almost impossible. but on the occasional lap that I did get, it seemed the pace of the car was a step forward on what we had at Snetterton albeit still not spectacular.

And then came Saturday... where I stayed at home all day waiting for Sunday to arrive as the race day was on the Sunday instead this time around, and I have to admit, it was very strange being at home all day on a race weekend.

Sunday started with a 20mins practice session at 9am, which after the Clio Cup cars had all fallen off or ended up facing the wrong way, I ended up getting a few consistent laps in to try and build on Friday. However, although the balance of the car felt ok, if a little tail happy, the pace at the front was very clearly up the road and gone from where I was at with the car.

Qualifying followed a few hours later and having initially got through some traffic, it was time to start setting a lap time having initialy jumped into 2nd place after the first lap times were set, only for the red flag to come out. In a 15 minute session around a 2:35 second lap, the break was less than ideal for everyone, but fortunately I was 2nd out of the pitlane once the session went green again and immediately jumped to Pole Position... for an entire second, before Aidan crossed the line and moved the bench mark by nearly 2 seconds. By the end of the session I was 7th which became 6th with a post qualifying penalty. The result put me on the 3rd row of the grid for both races, a significant improvement on Snetterton but still plenty of work to do!

The start to race 1 was solid if not spectacular, right up until Maggotts and Becketts where I decided to make things a little spicy. As I turned in to Maggotts the car had a snap sideways on me despite taking it easier through there than normal, followed by another 2 big snaps going through the following left before Becketts resulting in a few cars taking avoiding action and me having a lawn mowing experience. Once I rejoined the front 5 cars had already disappeared up the road and it was a case of trying to race back through the pack to recover as many positions as possible having dropped to 11th place.

Heading into lap 2 I immediately dropped to 12th going into Copse corner before finally starting the charge back through the pack, going round the outside of McAlpin at Vale corner and gaining another place due to Knibbs being escorted to the scenery infront and then taking Robinson through The Loop in whats become a bit of a trademark overtaking spot for me over the years.

Lap 3 started just as strong, taking Powell into Copse corner before taking Miller having gone 3 wide into Maggotts corner and finally Lundy on the exit of club corner, and after a bit of a misjudgement by Lundy to nearly turn me around at the loop, from there it was clear air in front and just trying to get away from the rest of the pack, with Allwood retiring a few laps later making it 5th place to finish the race.

The first lap of race 2 wasn't much better than race 1 being honest, this time managing to stay on the tarmac though! I found myself constantly on the wrong end of the slipstream train, dropping from 5th to 10th by the time lap one ended, once again meaning that instead of trying to hang on to the guys at the front, I was battling to get back through the pack.

After having a lap to catch back up with the front pack, I then started moving forwards again, taking Langridge into Stowe corner on lap 3 before taking McAplin at Copse corner on lap 4, using the rest of the lap to catch Miller for 6th place, having had 1 attempt to take the place at Copse the following lap fail, I then made the move stick down into Stowe corner, taking 6th place and maintaining it for the race finish.

All in all Silverstone was a very positive weekend, the pace was getting better all the way through the weekend and the car despite some balance issues in race 1 and 2 was pretty consistent with the changes we made to cure the imbalances! Its also given us a few ideas as what we can do to further improve the handling of the car for future races, and with me racing on the Brands Hatch GP for the first time ever, theres a lot of learning to be done!

Would like to thank all of my sponsors for helping me get to Silverstone and continue racing through a challenging period off track and a big shout out to Pezza for working his magic on the car both at home and at the circuit this year!

See you at Brands!

Jack