Toby Sowery - An F1 Star In The Making

Toby is my great nephew and he has followed in the family footsteps of being a bit of a petrol head, except Toby has taken it far further than anyone else has. I guess it started with his late grandfather (my brother) who always liked his cars and reached the pinnacle of owning an E-Type.

This is Toby’s latest car:

Toby was born in 1996 and fell in love with karting when he was on holiday as a young child. He began to take a keen interest in racing in general and soon was competing in club kart events. By the age of 13 he had won six club championships! In 2010 he was crowned the EasyKart UK Junior Champion and in 2011 he retained that title and also added the Super One Junior TKM championship thus he became the first and only youngster to hold both titles at the same time. It’s great to see some of his trophies, all bearing the names of drivers who have since become F1 champions.

Before he could gain his licence to compete in single seat race cars (and before he could hold a licence to drive a road car), he had to gain some wider experience, and he did this in Classic Formula Ford where he was 3rd overall and 1st in class. He also came first in class in the 1600 MR2 series and set the lap record at Donnington Park, also competing in a MGZR where he came second in class and achieved the fastest lap.

At the age of 17, Toby’s career took him into the world of single-seaters where he had a spectacular rookie year competing in the F3Cup run by MSVR, he raced with Lanan racing based near Milton Keynes. His first race at Snetterton was to set the scene for the full season of 16 races, his first ever race saw him win by over 20 seconds. The F3Cup season was run over 8 weekends including 2 visits to Snetterton, 2 weekends at Silverstone, and weekends at Rockingham, Oulton Park, Brands Hatch and the only overseas round at Spa in torrential rain. Toby secured the F3Cup championship in race 13 at Silverstone:

This season can be summed up with the following impressive statistics:

• 10 pole positions
• 10 wins
• 4 second places
• 10 fastest laps

He was on the podium for every single race of his rookie season.

Toby has just competed in the MRF challenge, a relatively new series of 12 races run over three weekends - quite a hard schedule. These were held in Qatar, Bahrain and the final round in Chennai. He was on the podium for 9 of the 12 races including 4 firsts and accumulating 3 fastest laps. He won the championship on race 10 with 2 races to go. He topped the driver standings by 47 points. As a result, Toby currently holds two championship titles.

Toby’s other achievements include, managing youngsters in karts, testing in BARC Formula Renault and Porsche Carrera S, being a driver coach and a being simulator development driver for iZone Performance.

The aim is to compete in Formula 1 and therefore become one of only 20 or so drivers on the track. He certainly has the talent having been recognised as a “future star” by Alex Hawkridge former Team Principal of Toleman Racing (now Lotus F1), who was the man who discovered and signed the late Ayrton Senna, reputedly the iconic and greatest F1 driver of all time. Toby is currently being managed by Jenson Button’s former management team.

Toby’s history and progress can be followed by social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Toby-Sowery-Racing/337963999629714?fref=ts
Twitter: @TobySoweryRacin
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TobySoweryRacing/videos
Website: www.tobysowery.co.uk

By Paul Eldred

Tweet

Living with - VW Golf GTi Mk5

Paul Eldred reviews his own Volkswagen Golf GTi Mk5

I’ve just realised that I’ve owned my Mk 5 Golf GTi for over 6½ years - this is the longest I’ve ever owned a car … so it must be good? In all honesty I bought the Golf as a means to preserve the mileage and condition of my Audi RS4, which was “relegated” to being a weekend toy. The Golf had a pretty tough act to follow and the two cars are not in the same class at all and it would be unfair to try to make any comparisons.

From my previous article about the RS4 you may realise that I’m not averse to a little bit of subtle modification to a car - I’m not a fins, spoilers and wheels type bloke - but performance and safety mods type. So it wasn’t long before the Golf had a treat at MRC Tuning in Banbury. First off was a cat-back exhaust and a remap but was soon followed by a de-catted downpipe and a sports cat (but only because the original cat failed) and a tweak to the map . The car is now very useable and quick, providing 264bhp which is quite a way up from the stock 200bhp quoted for the car.

I bought the car with about 18,000 miles on the clock and the day after I bought it, it broke down - miles away from home and in a really heavy rain storm. The car was recovered by VW and taken to a garage in Buckinghamshire and (at my insistence) VW paid for hotel accommodation as they couldn’t provide a hire car that late in the day.

Anyway - VW replaced a couple of coil packs and the cat under warranty. Sadly about three years after that there was a fuel injector failure which resulted in the car being recovered by the RAC to a garage. Oddly enough, on both these occasions, my partner’s mother was in the car with us … omen or just jinxed?

The car has been serviced every 10,000 miles and now has 127,000 miles on the odometer and has had two breakdowns in the 6½ years that I’ve owned it - now I don’t reckon that’s bad. I’ve had the driver’s side seat bolster repaired as it is badly attacked by buttons on my trouser pockets - but again you’d expect this with a car with this mileage. Surprisingly the clutch is still the original, despite handling that level of power so is a testament to the build quality of the car.

Over the last few years, we’ve used the car for road trips to watch the Barcelona F1 and visiting friends in the South of France - a good cruiser with plenty of room for the return trip loaded with crates of wine.

I’ve already said that the car is no match for the RS4, but really the performance is pretty impressive, as you can imagine with 264bhp on tap, the car is no slouch. Given good tyres and a dry road the front wheels grip pretty well, but, as expected, the front will break traction if provoked by some spirited acceleration. I’ve never noticed any torque steer but she does tend to tramline a bit when the tyres are towards the end of their life - but again that can be expected. Understeer? Yes of course, but generally the car has pretty good handling and lived up to the hype that was around when the car was launched. I may put stiffer ARBs on at some point. The car has the standard halogen headlights but I wish the previous owner had specified Xenons. The only thing that was disappointing from day one was the quality of the radio/CD player (RCD300), which I’ve subsequently replaced with a DAB version which has far better sound quality, and means I can listen to PlanetRock whilst driving!

The Monza II alloys are prone to kerbing as the tyres and hub are pretty much flush - I would consider some alloygators after they are refurbished next time.

If only VAG had a 4WD version of this car with that 2litre turbo engine rather than the heavier 3.2l V6 lump - that would be my ideal. However, I guess they do have that - it’s called the Audi S3 (but it only has three doors).

To date, this has been the easiest car to live with in all my years.

All photos: Paul Eldred

The video below shows Paul's Golf GTi on the rolling road at MRC Tuning

Tweet

Which three letters in the motoring world make you shudder?

NIP -Notice of Intended Prosecution. You know you’re in for some points and a fine if one of these flops onto your doormat. But for me, the three letters that cause me to shudder - MPV.

I’m sure many readers will feel the same as me about MPVs, these seem to have the ability to cause mayhem on the roads and car parks across the country.

We’ve all seen them, some readers may well have one, some of us have had the misfortune to have suffered parking dings and worse from them, some may have witnessed some really funny attempts at parking. Are they actually funny or is there a serious underlying issue here?

Very often there will be a sign in the back, a bit like a HazChem symbol, warning us that this is Mum or Dad’s taxi or that a little princess is on board - the point is some of these can legally carry seven people and in my mind that makes it a minibus rather than a “car”. Maybe they should carry a proper HazChem sign warning other drivers (if they didn’t know already) that bad parking, poor car control and erratic driving is likely to happen at any moment.

No doubt there are many very competent drivers out there who can adapt their driving style to suit these vehicles, but very often these MPVs are bought and then suddenly someone has jumped from a small family car into this very large vehicle without one second of additional driver training and maybe this is the reason behind those parking dings and the awful parking attempts we see in the local superstore car park.

Isn’t it about time that a new category was introduced on the driving licence to cover these vehicles and that in addition all drivers of such vehicles would have to pass a supplementary driving test to prove that they can drive and park them properly? It would be a good refresher for the driver anyway but also maybe they’ll then realise that they do indeed have a “precious cargo” on board - possibly five of their own spawn.

You wouldn’t feel safe in a plane if the pilot hadn’t been trained how to handle multiple engine failure together with losing cabin pressure at the same time would you? So I think the test should be more realistic. The vehicle should have a full load on board - fully weighted animatronic style dummies so that the driver can feel the difference that the extra load makes to the way the vehicle accelerates, corners and brakes.

One dummy will be behind the driver wearing headphones and watching a DVD too loud so that the driver can hear the tinny rattle of the headphones. This dummy would regularly kick the back of the driver’s seat during the test. The radio will be blaring out “The wheels on the bus go round and round” (on auto repeat throughout the test). Another dummy would be bickering and arguing with a sibling.

One dummy will want to go to the toilet during the test whilst another would complain about feeling ill - and then promptly vomit before you can stop safely. OK, I grant you that not all of this will happen at the same time when driving on holiday with your brood, but the chances are at least one of these things will happen and so the driver should be prepared.

OK, I’ll admit it’s not another vote winner in my driving manifesto, but maybe at some point in the future it will happen.

Article by Paul Eldred

Tweet