Upcoming meets & events

Please check the club website for the latest events and updates.

Driver Focus Max Cuthbert

Max Cuthbert, maybe isn’t a name you are familiar with but trust us, it’s one that you need to keep an eye on! Max is an 11 year old professional kart racer, racing in the FIA Iame Euro Series in Europe and on home soil in the British Kart Championships. Currently ranked 10 in the UK after exceeding all expectations in his rookie year of National competition, its fair to say Max is one to watch. Born March 2010, Max started karting aged 8.

2020 was Max’s first year in national competition, competing in the British Kart Championship and the Ultimate Karting Championship. This is the pinnacle of British karting where Max went up against the best drivers in the country. Finishing 2020 ranked 10 in the UK was a great result and Max complimented it with 7th in the Ultimate Karting Championship. Along the way he was setting many fastest laps at race weekends, and taking some great podiums, Max tells us “a highlight was qualifying on the front row of the British Kart GP at Paul Fletcher International Circuit”.

A Class Act…

We looked a bit further into the 2 classes that Max races in, here’s what we found…

FIA Iame Euro Series, Mini Swift this class is for ages 9-12, entrants must hold a National grade licence. The class has a weight limit of 110kg and uses the European 950mm mini chassis with 30mm axle. Power is delivered by the purpose built Iame X30 Mini Swift race engine. Tyres are supplied by Komet.

MSUK British Kart Championships, Honda

Cadet this class is for ages 8-12, entrants must hold a National grade licence. The class weight limit is 103g. Unlike the European series, the UK cadet classes run a smaller 900mm chassis, with 25mm axle. Power is delivered by a race tuned Honda GX160 engine (just like a generator uses). Tyres are supplied by Dunlop. 2021 is shaping up to be a big year for Max, and it’s definitely going to be a busy one, looking at Max’s race calendar which starts at the end of March, due to Covid delays, Max is racings an epic 39 out of 41 weekends and even has a weeks racing in Vegas in at the end of the year. So what are Max’s goals for the year? when we asked him its very clear that he is incredibly focused for such a young age. Max responded without hesitation “to win!”, Max believes he has a realistic shot at becoming the British Kart Champion this year and its clear that he has a team around him that believes in him too.

Teamwork…

Fitting in 39 weekends racing, and 6 weeks overseas requires dedication not only from Max but also his support network, so we looked into just what kind of entourage and 11 year old professional kart racer has. Max has a strong family support network that help him get around to his busy calendar, but surprisingly he also has a sizeable professional support team around him. Max is part of Fusion Motorsport, the UK’s premier kart team. They strive to start the careers of professional drivers all the way to Formula One. Offering world class preparation, coaching and engineering, setting the bar for karting in the UK. This is the team that on race day, ensure the kart set up is correct, manage strategies, work on Max’s data and video to help in make marginal gains to set him above the competition. To complement Fusion at the track, off track Max works with Elite Driver Management, their goal is to take drivers from the grassroots of motorsport and with the best coaching, mentoring and management available, turn their passion into a career. They work with Max on his personal fitness, mind coaching and simulator training. Max has a growing hub of supporters and backers, and we know he would love to see The Drivers Union membership get involved in his journey, so here are a few ways you can. Follow Max on his socials below: Insta: www.instagram.com/max.cuthbert FB: www.facebook.com/speedymaxcuthbert LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/maxcuthbert

Check out his website: www.maxcuthbert.com

Make a contribution on his crowd funding platform:

Want to be more involved either financially or using your expertise to help his journey, please get in touch: max@maxcuthbert.com

Club Calendar

All date are subject to change due to COVID restrictions. Events below do not include local area meets and events. Please visit the club website for all events and up to date information.

MAY

23 Crown Cars & Coffee

23 British GT /F3 Championship 30 Supercarfest - The Runway

JUNE

02 Brands Hatch track day with 96Club 05 National Ferrari owners day - convoys 10 London Concours 11 Bremont Watches factory visit 13 E-Type 60th Anniversary at Shelsley Walsh 13 Sheesh lunch

19 Club meet at Classic Motor Hub

20 Hever Castle - Cars at the Castle 25-27 The Classic Car Show at Syon Park

JULY

04 Classic & Supercars at Broughton Castle 18 Auto Italia at Brooklands Museum

25 Lamborghini v Ferrari 30/31 Silverstone Classic

AUGUST

01 Silverstone Classic 07-08 Beaulieu Supercar Weekend 08 Aveley FC Fun Day Car Show 15 Festival Italia 22 DU Family picnic at Ed’s 29 Supercarfest - The Hill 29 GT World Challenge

SEPTEMBER

04 RAF Brizefest Autosport 05 Concours of Elegance 05 Brize Norton

18/19 Petrolhedonism Live & Knebworth

The London Concours

Thursday 10th June 2021

Words & photos by Syeed Ali

On Thursday 10th June 2021, the Drivers Union will be displaying 50 cars at the London Concours, to be held at the Honourable Artillery Company Museum in the heart of the City of London.

I caught up with Andrew Evans to chat about the event.

How did you get involved in the London Concours?

The directors of Thorough Events Ltd, the business behind both shows, have been running the Concourse of elegance successfully for a number of years and they felt that there was an opportunity to launch an event in central London. I knew one of the directors through the event space and had spoken at conferences and done various things together. He learned of my availability and asked if I would come and take a look over a launch plan that they had, and I remember it really clearly, it was February the 14th 2017. Valentine’s Day. I looked at the blueprint, which was three or four pages of ideas and I asked if they had budget which he showed. I said, look, there’s a lot of work to be done here and I think the budget assumptions aren’t really as I would expect them to be, you’re planning to break even for starters. Forget it! If you’re going to launch a good show, you’ve got to lose six figures to be able to do it. But the one good thing here is that we’ve got 15 months to organise the show. And he said no, we don’t have 15 months, we have three months. And I said well, you’re insane to try and do something in that period of time, launching a consumer show from scratch. He said while he blew smoke, ‘you can do it!’ I’m a sucker for stuff like that so I said okay, let’s do it.

So when we actually launched in its first year, it was called the City Concord and hosted by the HSE, the Honourable Artillery Company, which is a sort of private military establishment that is a five and a half acre sports site at a military base, slap bang in the square mile. The aerial photography of it says it better and demonstrates the uniqueness of it better than I can. But yes, so in year one, we knocked everything together in three months and two weeks.

When and why did the name change to the London Concours?

In year the events steering committee asked the people that that they call upon for advice on how to create a great show, who said you’ve got it wrong, you’re calling it the City Congress based in the city, but it’s not just for the city. And therefore, you should change the name. And I’ve got to be honest with you running events for as long as I have I’ve never had such an external influence like that where they said you’ve got a great proposition but change the name.

So we changed the name to the London Concours, and it’s grown from strength to strength each year. And in fact, you’ll know that 2020 was a dreadful year for anyone involved in running live events and we were the first major event to take place in the UK after the lockdown in March. So a lot of learning was going on and what we ended up with was a really special show for London.

How did you prepare with the effects of COVID19?

To start with, we had to seek to understand whether there was enough capability to run the event and by that, I mean, could we safely run an event with the government’s support with Public Health England’s buy in? What were the protocols that might be required to run a safe event? That was the first day.

So we created a blueprint around which we worked with the venue in really tight harmony to ensure that we were joined up around our thinking and then that presentation was made to the local authority, and ultimately, all the agencies that were either going to sanction it or not sanction it. That was the first hurdle.

The second hurdle was going to the partners and sponsors, many of whom were already contracted to the event and so therefore, notionally committed and many of them said, well, we love the idea that you’re doing this show, but we’re not coming anymore because we don’t think it’s a responsible thing to do, or we’re just not in a financial position to do so. So I kind of lost half of my content that I already got. I should have postponed the show, because we were on a June dateline and nothing was happening that month. So we had to work for a dateline in mid-August and then start to secure the cars from the owners again.

In London, we had a record turnout of 101 competing cars, it was just fabulous. We coupled with a whole raft of really interesting content from exhibitors, sponsors, who partner with us and so we had to build it from scratch. It’s like going back to de dot really, but around COVID, we had to restrict the number of people that were able to come to the event, at any one time.

As we were only allowed 1800 people, we had to change all of the hospitality offerings. So in a marquee that would normally host about 350 people, we were allowed 110. You could have landed a helicopter between the tables. All of the food service was served in beautiful bento boxes, but actually all of the hospitality was created by us to minimize interaction with serving staff.

I was there both days. The weather on the Wednesday was….

Biblical rain! We’ve never had rain like that at the Concours, but it didn’t stop people from coming. The upside of that was that everybody had a brolly so two people with brollies made some natural social distancing.

What are the plans for 2021?

This year is really interesting as we’ve got many things going on around the London event and we’ve added a third day. The reason we’re doing that is to ensure even if we’ve got a COVID lag, we are able to run an event and to satisfy the audience demand. Last year, I think we had 4,300 people attend the event over the two days so the extra day will take us back to our more regular figure of between six and 7,000 people. The third day also enables us to start to look to a theme or to have different points of focus on each day. So the opening day will become a preview VIP owner day as we call it and naturally that’s the day that gets a lot of attention with the Press. It’s also the day that the main concours judging will take place. So we have the judging in the morning and in the early evening, we do an awards reception and announce the winners.

The second day will focus a bit more on the summertime automotive garden party aspect and without any apology, we’re focusing on the fairer sex as we want this to become a special day for partners of guys. We are calling the second

day The Style Addition and we hope to be able to generate a new and interesting content. A spotlight on the worlds of design, fashion and luxury. It’s an opportunity to dress your best and browse some of the nation’s finest luxury goods in an automotive summer garden party setting.

And for Thursday, the final day?

The third day is really exciting and very poignant to this conversation. We’re going to flip some of the content and have a focus around supercars because we’ve got the opportunity to satisfy a whole load of interest around people with younger supercars who are I suppose, if you step back and look at it, are synonymous with the city.

On the third day with a supercars, how will that work?

On the first two days we’ll have around 10 feature and class areas, each one of those will have between 10 and 12 cars, so about 120 cars on the lawn. They are either cars that are in formal judging classes or their feature areas and it’s probable that we will swap out two or three of those classes so the event fairies will come overnight. The site plan will change slightly and there will be a bit more supercar content on the lawn. Additionally, we will be inviting a number of supercars. Of course the Drivers Union will be the first port of call for that, but so that people can have the experience of driving into the HSC parking on the lawn in strategic areas, showcasing their pride and joy and then going off and enjoying the day so a bit more like Hampton Court Palace.

I heard somewhere that the lawns at the venue are quite unique

The groundsman at the Honourable Artillery company is the most important person there and the grass is the second most expensive cricket pitch in the world, with the most expensive being in Singapore. He’s very particular about what we do on the grass which is the same in other venues that we use. For example, you can’t run an event in Windsor Castle on the Quadrangle that Her Majesty steps onto most mornings. It’s alien to think that it’s good to put cars on grass of that quality, but we do it very professionally and we are welcome back each year.

The London Concours is held at the Honourable Artillery Company, City Road, London EC1Y 2BQ from 8th to 10th June 2021.

Scan for website

Auto Italia at Brooklands

Sunday 10th October 2021

Postponed in 2020, Auto Italia is back this year but slightly later than their usual date. A mecca for Italian cars of every type, we already have 45 cars signed up.

Held at the very historic Brooklands Museum, the entry price also gives you access to all the facilities at the venue. From the historic displays to exploring the variosu aircraft parked around the venue. Subject of course to COVID restrictions.

Access for this event is for Italian cars only.

Sign up via the club website or click on the QR code to be taken to the webpage.

Festival Italia

Sunday 15th August 2021

Our freinds at Brands Hatch have again given us free tickets for this spectaular event. Ticket is for car, driver and passenger. Please note that this event is for Italian cars only. There will also be a lunch time parade on track as we did in 2019.

We have 43 cars signed up so far and only a few spaces left..w

This event is open to Associate & Club members.

RAF Brizefest Autosport

Saturday 4th September 2021

The Drivers Union will be supporting the RAF at Brizefest this year.

“Brizefest is the years finale to celebrate the hard work by all military personnel at RAF Brize Norton and to appreciate the families behind them.

This year we want to involve people and cars that want to be part of an evolving car show. The show is on a live military base, which houses all four of the RAF’s mighty transport fleet. The C-17, Voyager, A-400M and C-130J, all of which you will see and can go onto for a tour. Comprising of a car show, there is also food and drink to buy, a funfair, live music in the evening and a fly past, plus The Falcons parachute display team jumping.

The event is FREE, yes FREE and if you stay after most cars have departed, you can have some amazing up close and personal photos with the aircraft.

All you need is a car, a passport or driving licence and you will have a day out you’ll never forget.”