With what seemed like a never-ending closed season, Brands Hatch just played host to the opening season of the 2022 British Truck Racing Championship in an Easter Extravaganza. And what a ‘cracking’ Easter weekend of racing it turned out to be.

The hard work and long nights put in by the team at the workshop all over the winter made it all totally worthwhile while though, as the sun shone on us (both literally and metaphorically) in what was to be an excellent weekend of racing.

We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the season with John qualifying in 1^st place on Saturday morning with a time of 1:01.505. John started race 1 on pole. Second placed Jock Borthwick got off to a great start during the actual race proceedings though which saw John pushed back to second. Both drivers had a great battle for that top podium but an unfortunate late mistake from Jock saw John come through to take the win. But it was close.

John’s second fastest qualifying lap of 1:01.817 was enough to see him on pole again for the 2^nd race and by now, the entire team was starting to thinking after some of the bad luck of previous seasons that perhaps, and just maybe, 2022 was going to be a good one for JP Racing. John got off to a much better start in this race with the smell of victory still fresh, and he doggedly held that 1^st place position all race for another win.

The racing on Sunday saw the 1^st two races reverse grid drawn from Saturday’s races meaning John would start from the back of the grid for race 3 and race 4. But this was John’s weekend and he fought hard for a 4^th place finish in race 3 and after 2 stoppages in race 4, John managed an impressive 2^nd place podium. If you like stats, you’ll be interested to note that he also had the fastest lap time in race 4 of 1:01.562.

The final race of the day from reverse grid of race 3 put John on 3^rd on the grid. John managed to gain a place and spent several laps putting pressure on leader John Bowler, who also made a unfortunate mistake putting himself wide and in the gravel and John took full advantage. Maybe the sight of Johns 2022 race livery in the rear view mirror of other drivers is too much of a distraction? John completed the weekend with a hat trick win and another fastest lap time of 1:01.380.

So at the end of a great starting weekend to the season, the team left Brands Hatch heading the Division 2 Championship. And we think we can safely say that the development of the Cummins ISG12 engine has been effective, but we still think there maybe more yet to come out from it.

Across the weekend we also provided some hospitality for our sponsor William from Green Biofuels and his VIP guests. William was participating in his 2^nd event of racing with MGs on Saturday. We wish him all the best for the remaining season.

We are now looking forward to our next event at Pembrey on 7^th/8^th May. One of the circuits where John has historically always done well, and it’s a track with a spectacular back drop.

We wouldn’t have been able to reach this point though without the time and effort from the team and the support and resources from our sponsors, and we affectionately believe, we have the best team and the best sponsors this season. We’d really like to take this opportunity to thank the team for the time and hard work before and over the weekend. There were smiles all round when we left our local track.

Thanks to the team: Raf, Richard, Dayle, Merrie, Bryan, Alex, Cheryl. A big thanks to sponsors Nick and Steve from RSM, who are always a great help. We also had some valuable help from Richard’s sons and our newest team members Peter and Bret.

We’d also like to send out massive thanks to all our valued partners:

RSM Driver Training/RSM Truck Racing

Green Biofuels

Premier Diagnostics

Lantern Recovery Specalists

MAHA UK

Midland Caliper Centre

Thompsons Bodies

Witham/Motul Oils

Mark Luck Ltd