FEATURE
Historic Tiga Sport 2000s, driven by Mike Fry and Clive Steeper go wheel-to-wheel
CTJ Photography
The seven-round season, which at times runs alongside the GT Cup championship, includes double-headers, a mini-enduro race and a season-ending triple header. It visits top UK venues including Silverstone, Brands Hatch, Oulton Park, Snetterton and Donington, and offers the chance to travel to a nonchampionship event in Europe, with past destinations including Spa, Zandvoort, Le Mans, Dijon and, this year, Zolder in Belgium.
The championship attracts a competitive mix of drivers, which Steeper says includes a significant number of professional race instructors. That makes it fiercely competitive at the sharp end of the field, but with 25-30 cars in each race – around a dozen historic Pintos and the rest modern Duratecs – and each category split into three age-related classes, there is plenty of direct competition throughout the field.
Reigning champion Gibbins has won five overall titles since he started in 2014, but this year is in a tight battle with fellow MCR driver Joshua Law, who won three seasons ago. He enjoys the close competition and explains:“ It’ s been particularly close between us two for a few years but at no point has either of us really run away with it. You can’ t do anything crazy to the car to give yourself a wild advantage, so it’ s always pretty close.”
In contrast to Gibbins and Law, Iley – who has been Chief Aerodynamicist for Jordan, Renault, Ferrari, McLaren and Caterham during his career – had turned 50 before he made his racing debut. The intensive nature of working in F1 gave him no time to race, but when the Caterham F1 project came to a halt and he decided to go freelance, he grabbed the opportunity to make time to get behind the wheel.
“ It was a bucket list for me to get in a race car so for my 50th birthday, my family and friends clubbed together and got me my ARDS test,” he recounts.“ It was around that time that I’ d become more independent in my work, and I was asked to go to the university to do a talk to the students. I realised how much they were doing and thought it was really interesting, so I started to get involved.
“ I saw that they were pushing some boundaries and hopefully providing motorsport with future engineers, so I started helping with the aero on the car, lecturing and mentoring students. Then an opportunity came up to join Tim in a similar car, so we could compare data across one car to the other, and it just shows, it’ s never too late! I’ m constantly learning and I’ m getting more competitive as time goes on.”
Having listened to feedback from the top racing names throughout his career, the chance to get behind the wheel gave Iley a new insight into what goes on inside the mind of a driver and he adds:“ On many levels, I wish I’ d done it ages ago because you understand so much more from being in the car and feeling things. I always knew what‘ good’ looked like from an engineering point of view but now I know from a driving point of view too.
CTJ Photography
Current Sport 2000 champion Michael Gibbins
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Revolution- September 2025