Paul Thurston

I started simracing on a BBC Micro back in 1981 using Revs but then lost interest for a decade or so. In the late 90s I got the motor racing bug leading to a fairly unimpressive foray into real world club racing in the Mighty Minis series. I only did four races over two seasons which ended with Alain De Cadenet crashing my car at Brands, my team manager and mechanic being arrested for GBH and ferrying ADC to Maidstone police station to retrieve his bike keys so he could get home for dinner with his daughter. There’s a book in that whole adventure somewhere but noone would believe it. I came out of it £9,000 down but with the memory of having raced at Brands and overtaken someone into Paddock Hill Bend.

In ‘99 though I discovered GPL. I found that my conservative driving style and computer knowledge gave me an edge in the era of 56k modems. I found out about the UKGPL championship and entered season 2. I was initially placed in the fourth division but as I won the first race from pole they bumped me up a division. I managed to bookend the season with wins at Zandvoort and Brands Hatch and win the championship, though if I’m honest choosing the fastest car had a lot to do with it.

I continued to race in UKGPL for a few more years and became heavily involved in the GPL modding community. I developed GEM+ which acted as a secondary user interface to the sim to enable switching between different carsets and physics. There’s still an active GPL community and they still use GEM+.

Working on the mod team meant I drifted away from actually racing GPL but then one day in Spring 2008 I received an email inviting me to join the iRacing private beta team and seeing it as the next step up from GPL I jumped at it. From day one I loved the Skip Barber. It had a GPL like simplicity which made it fun to race. I later dabbled with other cars like the Radical and managed to win Dvision Three of the official Radical Championship as well as a number of league races in it but I’ve always come back to the Skip.

I started racing in Monday Night Skippies when it grew out of the UK&I club combined MX5/Skippy series. I was initially fairly competitive and managed a number of podiums and even a win from pole at Okayama in my best season when I finished third in the championship.

My sojourn with the Radical meant I drifted out of the series for a year or so and when I came back I found things had moved on somewhat. The series had gained a lot of publicity through the excellent Racespot coverage and I found myself fighting for a place in the mid 20s, podiums were a distant memory.

I worked at it though and over the last couple of years I’ve managed to drag myself back to a position where I get regular top tens despite the standard having risen even further. While podiums might still be tantalisingly out of reach, on a good day I can at least sometimes even see the winner!

I always try to pop into Racespot for a chat with the commentary team after the races and talk about any old rubbish. It gives them someone to talk to if noone else turns up. :o)