01.08.07 Blast from the past

It was a serious case of deja vu recently as a blue, white and red 2004 Embassy Racing liveried Corvette GT2 race car was seen hurtling around the Oulton Park circuit in sunny Cheshire.

Some time ice-cream entrepreneur and Team Manager Jody Firth was spotted behind the wheel and several onlookers were moved to comment on his quite blistering performance. This was confirmed later in the day as the circuit medical team did indeed have to treat Mr Firth’s hands for blisters, though they couldn’t be certain if they were caused by his death grip hold on the steering wheel during his laps or some earlier type of furious hand activity.

The reason for the outing was to ensure the safe return of the actual car that Embassy competed with mixed fortunes in the 2004 British GT Championships. Having been variously stored and rented to other teams over the past couple of years, it was time to bring the American beauty back into the fold, and a short test around the track was required to check its condition.

Although there are no plans to bring it out of competitive retirement, the Corvette was found to be all “up together” and Jody posted very respectable times amongst the other vehicles testing on the same day. In fact the President of the Mini-Moto Society remarked that the Embassy man was a born racer and he would be more than welcome to join his nephews in a lap or two on their 1/12th scale 5bhp Ducati to see if he could qualify for the end of day race. Unfortunately Jody had made arrangements to visit his girlfriend’s grandparents in Ireland that weekend and needed to get off to the airport.