Enduro KA Indy 500 - Baptism of Fire

There's a bit of a back story as to how I ended up in KA's... I'll try and keep it fairly brief!

Back in September 2025 I was invited to Thruxton to take part in an army day, taking both active and retired army members for passenger hot laps in my E92 M3. Great day all round and great to give people a chance to experience the fun of being out on track! Especially at Thruxton where the M3 was topping out at just over 145mph. Anyway I digress... While I was there I was talking to an instructor from Thruxton about my racing and he mentioned that he had a seat free to race a KA at Brands Hatch in November if I fancied it. Obviously the answer was yes!

Unfortunately in between Thruxton and the race day, the car got damaged and the team pulled out of the race - no KA's for me! Then by chance, I was chatting to another Clio racer at Mallory Park and unbeknownst to me, he used to race KA's and still works for an arrive and drive team that runs them. Cue a week before the race, he found out that a team had a driver drop out due to a burst appendix and asked if I wanted the seat... again, obviously the answer was yes!

Due to work commitments, I couldn't make the test day before the race weekend, so I knew my first time in the car was going to be in Quali. Not ideal, but at least I knew the track now and had experienced racing at Brands Hatch before.

Turns out I was running in car # 49. Privately owned, but by LDR Performance. I was in a team of 4, so a 2 hour race stint each - a little different than the 15min Clio races! The team were all great and really welcoming. The owner of the car, David, took the first quali stint and put in his 3 full laps, then kindly came in early to let me out to have a slightly longer stint. Cue baptism of fire! It was wet, dark and within one lap the car completely misted up. Thankfully due to comms I found out where the demist button was (spoiler: it wasn't working anyway), I did then thankfully find out that you are allowed to run with the window slightly down - and by this point I was sitting behind the safety car, so I had some time to work it all out. Once the initial mist stress was over, the safety car was called in and I set off, I quickly found out going into druids that there was no ABS and the car was far more prone to lock up than the Clio. Racing in the dark and wet was definitely an eye opener, but I kept it on track and ended up with the second fastest quali time of the team of 4 with a 1:13.697.

Overall we qualified P26 out of 29 cars.

Next day was race day. Adrian took first stint as he qualified with the quickest time. When we arrived at the circuit in the morning you could barely see the track through the mist and the ground was definitely still damp. Obviously the good old English weather wasn't giving us any definitive clues as to what it was going to do... rain, snow, sleet, fog, sunshine? The team opted to keep the wet set up from qualifying as admittedly, as of the race start, it looked like it could be a wet one!

Obviously as soon as the race started, the sun came out, the track was dry within a few laps and it turned out the wet set up was not the right call. I was taking the second stint of the race and was raring to go. Unfortunately the sister car in our team had a massive shunt on the second lap of the race, getting a tank slapper at the bottom of Paddock Hill, going full beans backwards into the barrier, the impact of which sent it all the way across the track to the other barrier. Driver off the medical centre (thankfully he was fine, just a bit bruised), and the car was limped back in to the garage with the whole team focussed on trying to get it back out.

The first 2 hours of the race flew by and soon it was my turn to hop in the car. Within a lap or 2 I realised that my comms weren't working so it was going to be a solo 2 hours with only myself for company! It was quite literally, excuse the pun, night and day difference from quali. It suddenly felt a lot easier, firstly the car wasn't misted up and I could see, and secondly it was dry, so one less thing to think about on track!

I ended up doing the quickest lap time of the team, with a 1:04.642 and we finished the race overall in P15 - 11 places up from where we started.

I definitely feel like I could have had some more pace, but I was definitely treading the fine line of not wanting to crash a car that 1. Wasn't mine and 2. Had 2 other drivers waiting to complete their stints in it! The team had said from the beginning that the main priority was getting the car to the end, which we did, with I think only one minor paint addition from a bit of rubbing with another car.

For me it was a great learning experience, not that the Clio's are overly powerful, but compared to the KA's they are like Ferraris! It was a great lesson in the KA's of the importance of carrying speed and not over braking anywhere. It was also a good chance for me to practice some overtaking and defending, with 29 cars on the grid and a complete mix of drivers you were never on track on your own! Also to top the weekend off, it awarded me the final 2 signatures that I needed to lose my novice cross and upgrade my licence to a National A! Happy days all round!