2026 Miata Trophy Round 3 Brands Hatch GP: GT World, Gearbox Drama & Weather Madness!

Where do I even begin is the question!

The Brands Hatch GP WEEK was always going to be a bit of a manic one, especially when supporting such a massive GT championship, and with "testing" being on the Monday, it felt like a very prolonged race week, and thank god it was!

Kicking off the week, on Monday we headed down to Brands Hatch early doors for a track day on the GP circuit as the official test day as normal was only on the Indy circuit. When we got there, we quickly realised this was going to be a very very busy track day, getting clear laps would be almost impossible. The first run out was just a simple bedding in of some brake pads, and then I went out for a second stint, but on the 3rd lap, coming out of Graham Hill bend, the car started making a horrific noise, so I took a short cut from Surtees corner back to the pit lane where the knocking coming from the car was very loud.

We initially thought Diff after our issues at Snetterton, but soon realised that it was the gearbox that had let go. 3rd gear had decided to strip itself and at that point it looked like the day was over.

Thankfully for us, Aidan let us borrow one of his gearboxes for the day and Pezza with help from Tom at Hills Motorsport got the old gearbox out and the new one in ready for the afternoon!

With the borrowed gearbox in, it was time to get cracking, and try and put some decent laps on the board and after a few tweaks to stop the car going full Tokyo drift on me through clearways, I felt like we had a really strong car underneath me for the weekend, and even ended up packing up early!

Back at base, Pezza was working his magic as always, and had the borrowed gearbox out in no time whilst also stripping the broken gearbox and trying to source all the parts to rebuild it, whilst knowing we had a back up of our own spare gearbox if required.

Unfortunately though, despite a lot of help from one of my sponsors Mazspec, we were 1 part short of getting the gearbox rebuilt, so on Thursday the spare was fitted.

After heading down Friday evening, it was time for Qualifying on Saturday morning as we were greeted to a very warm start to the day!

As I headed out onto the circuit, I had to pull a few quick overtakes to get myself to the front of the pack for the opening lap of qualifying, including a cheeky little move on ex F1 Driver Martin Donnelly! (An absolute Gent I may add) However, the outlap wasn't all plain sailing, as I was really struggling to get 3rd gear from the spare gearbox, both on the upshift from 2nd and then the downshift from 4th to 3rd! It definitely took some patience with the gearshifts and was an issue I just had to carry through the rest of the weekend! But after initially setting a few decent laps, I dropped down to 7th, and with the heat, improvement didn't look likely as trying to improve I dropped it on the exit of Paddock Hill bend and did a small rally driving experience to get back onto the circuit... but just a few laps later, after cooling everything down slightly, I was 0.58 up heading into Sheene's corner... and well I have to be honest, I had probably the biggest oversteer moment I've ever had in the car, and somehow caught it... but at the same time lost all the time I had gained. I finished 7th with some brown overalls!

With the circuit getting hotter and hotter, we made some further changes to the car to stop the oversteer but also to help the rear tyres survive the 20mins! After a crash in Qualifying for Will Antrobus I was promoted to 6th on the grid.

After what felt like a really good launch off the line I headed down to Paddock Hill bend and noticed that Langridge was already alongside me from 8th on the grid and past me! Dropping me down to 7th place and that was where I would stay for quite a while, as I watched Max Brown and John Langridge race hard for 5th place, I just had to sit back, keep my tyres under control and wait for the inevitable drop off as the front 4 escaped.

Sure enough, John eventually made a move stick down into Hawthorns corner and I followed him past Max and up to 6th as Max's tyres dropped off a cliff, it was then a straight forward battle for 5th between John and myself.

With 3 laps from the end I made my move into Paddock Hill bend, up over the kerb on the inside with a late but clean move to take 5th and pull away. Unfortunately though I just didn't have enough time to catch the front 4 in the last 2 laps even with the gap closing pretty quickly.

Race 2 was far less simple.

2 hours before the race, everything seemed to go cold quite quickly, and a quick glance at the forecast, rain was due to hit about 20mins after our race, but unsurprisingly, this wasn't accurate at all! Just as we were about to leave the assembly area onto the grid, it started to rain, very lightly, and thankfully we were ready for it. Pezza was under the car at the very last moment sorting out the damper settings and off I went into the unknown starting from 9th!

Lap 1 was chaos as always! Losing a place to Allwood off the line, I would then overtake Kalsi, Fleet and Powell through Surtees and the run down to Hawthorns, before going around the outside of Allwood at Graham Hill bend on Lap 2. I wasn't done there either, taking McAlpin and Robinson on the run to Clearways, but losing the place to Allwood. Mx-5's were everywhere!

Allwood and I then traded places through Paddock Hill and Druids before he eventually cemented his control on the position.

From there everything settled down for a few laps until we caught Miller, and had the joys of dealing with a lot of moving under braking all while the rain continued to slowly fall, eventually getting past but not after I had lost a position to both Cossins and Lee.

The next victim on the list was Fletcher, as Cossins, Lee and myself steamed through with me taking the position into Clearways, and taking Lettis the following lap into Druids, the chase was on to catch Langridge!

Catch we did! On the last lap with Cossins and Allwood having already worked their way past, it was a 3 way battle for 3rd place between Langridge, Lee and myself, and as Lee tried a move around the outside of Langridge into Surtees, I got a really good exit and pulled alongside but on the outside as we headed to Hawthorns for the last time, and with the grip levels at their lowest I dropped the car to 3rd gear on the entry hoping Lee would go in late on the brakes for the cut back, and I made it stick! up to 4th after what was a cracking race!

It says something about the standard of racing in the championship when after all the overtaking that went on, everyone got out the cars absolutely buzzing! The racing all weekend was exceptional on the whole and one that I felt very happy to be a part of!

Unfortuantely now we have a long wait until August for Round 4, but its at one of my favourite circuits! I cannot wait to be heading back to North Wales to Anglesey.

I would like to also take this moment to thank Gary Hawkins, who throughout both Monday and Saturday was all over the circuit capturing photos for me, and even spent some time to come and say hello and chat with both me and the family! A proper legend that really goes the extra mile!

See you all at Anglesey!

Jack