Now live - RAC Future Car Challenge Start

Official Start line photos from Madeira Drive for the inaugural Brighton to London Future Car Challenge can be found here:  http://gallery.sussexsportphotography.com/a.tlx?k=h9azg9j

A variety of the fast, furious, a rock star and generally well mannered engineer types gathered at Madeira Drive in Brighton for the inaugural Brighton to London Future Car Challenge.
In a refreshing rebirth of the original emancipation run (now known as the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run) which was originally instigated to show off the latest in car technology and celebrate a change in the law, (way back in 1896) we now have the same sort of thing, but driving in the opposite direction.


These days the laws on taxation of vehicles is changing, and the world and environment we live in is changing, so the technology we are driving is also changing. With necessity being the mother of invention, the world of transportation is changing and this run brought the latest real world prototypes and production cars to the streets to show us what they can do (even on the A23 traffic through Brixton...)


You can read more all about it on the FCC website here: http://www.futurecarchallenge.com
as well as see a full entry list .


The Media scrum at the start line was pretty tight - but at 8am on a cold dark Saturday morning in November there wasn't much else going on in Brighton to be honest. Certainly not that many Pink Floyd band members driving sport cars about, which is probably why Sky TV did a live interview and broadcast of Nick Mason (see below).

The  most radical micro car entry was the Gordon Murray design T.25 - set out like the three seater McClaren roadster from a few years back, just a bit more compact.

The Tata Indica Vista had a good show in the final results and awards as the most economical small passenger car.

 The amusingly (?) labelled "Slater Stallworthy" as drivers drove off in car 47 for what car?, and was unfortunately the only car to stutter and stagger off the line. Don't show anyone that video guys...

 Whilst most of the cars did try to preserve as much fuel as possible off the start line by accelerating at almost tidal speads, I'm thoroughly pleased to say that the Tesla sprot cars all decided to show what an electric sport car can do off the line, and dissapeared off up Madeira drive (below the speed limit) in near silence... which was very Rock star...

This was the car that won the overall challenge this year -  a pre-production prototype electric vehicle from VW. The Blue e-motion Golf.

On an interesting note, John Hilton of Flybrid Technologies was on the judging panel, and his road car flywheel technology being mechanical (and therefore more efficient than those old chemical battery storage thingys) is under development with the Jaguar FHSPV system . I'm looking forwards to seeing one of those on the start line next year, as a production ready vehicle. Don't let us down John, and come up with an alternator-based retrofit so we can all save 20% fuel.

Right, a few five thousand or so veteran car run photos to catalogue from the Sunday now - it will be here http://gallery.sussexsportphotography.com/a.tlx?k=24fzg9i when it's ready - hopefully wednesday.


Back to running events next weekend, although the Billericay 10k gallery from Sunday can now be found here - if that's what you were waiting for ! http://gallery.sussexsportphotography.com/a.tlx?k=3nxzg7f

Until next time
Anthony