We received an invitation to race at Castle Combe, as part of their Midsummer Mania August bank holiday event and although it was only to be two weeks after our Silverstone round, we jumped at the chance to add another race meeting to our 2026 calendar. Three 924s signed up including Karl Rossin, who missed Silverstone due to a last-minute demand for his electrical services. Aiden and dad Andrew Crockett were to be the other runners.
The event also included a 40-minute race, the Castle Combe 100 Bernard Jackson Motorsport Trophy, as the final race of the day, and we opted to take part in that race too, adding our name to the reserves list.
My ringer of a co-driver David Hornsey put the car on pole for the CALM race (1:26.800) but Karl Rossin looked as though he was wearing his speediest race pajamas, only 1.2 seconds behind. In our qualifying session for the Bernard Jackson Motorsport Trophy, David was even quicker, posting 1:23.349 and putting us in P3 in class.
I took the first of the two CALM races, and at the start very quickly losing class pole to Karl Rossin, who proved to be uncatachable – at least by me. That left me with Aiden to battle for 2nd, with the pair of us swapping places a few times. My recently-fitted badge panel departed the car along Avon Rise and only a third of it survived to be returned to the paddock later. A little rain arrived and the race was red-flagged after a Boxster lost it at the final corner and slammed backwards into the pit wall (driver OK, car not so OK). We were re-assembled on the grid and the battle with Aiden continued with me finishing less than a second behind with a fastest lap of 1:27.785.
My co-driver David was to do the second CALM Porsches race of the day. Having found that his qualifying time wasn’t far shy of the 924 lap record – set by Pip Hammond many moons ago – he set off with the intention of beating it. And he did, with a lap time of 1:22.855. Sadly he had no one to race against (one car retired having started to make a noise like a tractor and another had a drive shaft failure), but still took home the class 1st place trophy.
Sadly there was to be no 40-minute race for us – the event was terminated due to severely damaged Armco (nothing to do with us).
The 924’s next outing will be at Thruxton on Saturday, September 26 for a single 40-minute race, which David and I will share.