OUMF ‘Action Week’ - January 10th-18th 2026

As OUMF does every year, at the beginning of January the students at the Oxford Universities Motorsport Foundation went on another adventure in Action Week 2026. The week started at the British Motor Museum for National Rally Day, on a quite cold albeit sunny Saturday. We were generously given the opportunity to show the 1966 ‘Inca’ Alfa
Romeo Sprint GT Veloce endurance rally car. When we arrived it was placed outside the main door, and quickly became one of the most-admired exhibits in the display of top rally cars in the bright sunshine that bathed the British Motor Museum - on one of the busiest Rally Days ever. It even got its portrait sketched and gifted to us by a talented young artist! The Head of Collections, Stephen Laing, granted the OUMF team free tickets to the main exhibition halls downstairs, and then David Stockbridge gave us a guided tour of the famous road and race cars in the Jaguar Heritage Collection which is housed in a large adjacent building on the same site. We were treated to a beautiful and exotic mix of Jaguars and  Daimlers, plus many weird and wonderful BMC prototypes which never saw production.

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Sunday saw us showcasing the ‘Inca’ Alfa and the Riley Kestrel at the Bicester Heritage ‘Scramble’, which was cold and cloudy, but still a sell-out and extremely well-attended. The centre piece of this Scramble was the extraordinary sight of a hangar full of many racing Jaguars through the years, including no less than six of the beautiful Silk Cut World
Sportscar Championship / Le Mans racecars (including the 1988 Le Mans winner!). The OUMF display was stationed around Hedley Studio’s courtyard (many thanks to OUMF grad Rob Mason) alongside their own delectable scale road cars. Both the Alfa and Kestrel attracted a lot of attention from the general public, plus many old friends and supporters
came to give us a visit. 

Monday was the first of two days we would spend on the road, with the Volvo towing the Elva Courier in the race trailer. First on the list was the visit to Draper Tools. We arrived at their imposing HQ in Chandlers Ford near Fareham at around 11 am and were greeted by senior manager Nigel Whatley and taken to their enormous tool showroom that somehow only had 50% of their products on display! After lusting over the contents of this Aladdin’s Cave, Nigel invited us to follow him to another site nearby, where we found their distribution centre - a seven hundred and fifty
thousand square foot warehouse (that’s the size of ten football pitches!) In that warehouse, we were taken on a
tour of their storage facility (containing over sixty-four thousand pallets of goods), plus their packaging and
distribution section. This all took a couple of hours, and after our early start from Oxford, we were all feeling a little hungry by the time we returned to the showroom. Nigel then surpassed himself by first producing a surprise buffet lunch for us all, and then, as we were about to leave, he very generously presented Ding with a powerful Induction Coil Heater for which we were all very grateful.

We said our thanks and goodbyes and set off for our great sponsors at Owlesbury Crankshaft Services in Alresford, owned by John Gray. Their engine machining work is legendary, and chief engineer Mike Betteridge gave us a very interesting tour around their new workshop showing all the different high-precision machines that they use to produce
results of the accuracy and quality that is fundamentally responsible for OUMF’s success in racing. It was great for the team to be able to meet and thank Mike in person for the precious support of OCS, and to better understand all the various processes that must be deployed to create the building blocks of a race-winning engine. He kindly allowed us to leave parts of our new Sebring Spite engine for machining, and a cracked cylinder head and carburettor for attention by Nathan, OCS’s very talented laser welder. 

After that very enlightening visit, we drove a short distance to see Anthony Bentley at Classic Automobiles Worldwide at Froxford. He and his brother Robert have a vast collection of superb classic cars for sale there, but there were a few in particular that I thought deserved a special mention. These included a 1924 Bentley 4.5 Litre Speed Le Mans, a 1 of 22 manual 1969 Jensen Interceptor Mk 1, and a 1961 Messerschmitt KR 200. After touring the main collection, we were allowed to see Anthony’s private collection, which was perhaps even more impressive as it included many particularly well-known models such as Lotus Esprits, Ferrari 308s, and even a Ferrari Testarossa! His knowledge about every car was truly impressive and came with a wealth of great stories. A favourite was that an obsessive client of his in the Middle East had amassed no less than 200 of the 499 Jensen CV8’s ever produced!

As darkness fell, the OUMF convoy made its way south towards Goodwood, finally arriving at Locksash Farm, where Tom Reid and his parents, Stuart and Jenny, generously hosted the whole team for the evening. They had prepared a delicious meal of chilli con carne and shepherd's pie, for which we were extremely grateful, and which contributed to a great evening of fun and laughter around the dinner table. Come bedtime, somehow all 14 of the team found space to sleep around the house, and the exciting day came to a contented close.

Early on Tuesday morning, we arose and were yet again treated to Stuart and Jenny’s lavish hospitality in the form of a wonderful cooked breakfast - before we thanked them profusely and set off for Eagle E-Types in East Sussex. The journey was supposed to take about an hour, but part of the OUMF convoy got held up for an hour and a half when a lorry caught fire in a road tunnel outside Worthing, and so some of us only got to Eagle as the rest of the team were concluding the tour!

I was one of the lucky ones who arrived on time at Eagle, which is a very well-known and well-respected restorer of Jaguar E-Types, but they also produce their own beautifully enhanced versions, like the famous Eagle Roadster, which are state-of-the-art ‘restomods’. We were met by Dan Lawson and given a very interesting tour of the Eagle workshops, which are a series of converted farm buildings that snake their way up hill through trees and gardens. On our way through the workshops, we were shown some beautiful E-Type specimens in various states of build, from bare chassis to finished cars. The attention to detail, dedication, and perfectionism of the craftsmen there was very impressive. After this tour we were very privileged to be shown the private collection of Henry Pearman, the owner of Eagle, which was stunning by any standards. In his varied collection were many Group C endurance cars (Including four Porches that Jochen Mass raced at Le Mans), pretty much every Ducati Superbike you could imagine, plus multiple Aston Martin DB5’s. The reason he has so many? He just likes DB5s! Those of the OUMF team who had been delayed on the way arrived just in time for a brief, tantalising glimpse of this before we had to say our goodbyes and set off for CCK Historic; possibly the most important part of the week - at least in terms of our race season.

During the drive to CCK Historic, the Volvo gearbox began to complain on the very steep hills as we approached, but we reached them ok and the Elva was quickly unloaded from the trailer in heavy rain and pushed onto the rolling road. While on the rollers, the Elva was dyno tested with a larger Weber 48 DCOE carburettor and manifold fitted, and Graham Smeeton and Ali Rainford's expertise managed to squeeze a very impressive 20 bhp more out of the new engine! It was good to see Shaun Rainford, the owner, and his son Charles, too, who drove the Riley so well at the last Goodwood Revival. Shaun and Ding had much to talk about, and we encountered running issues with the Elva, so, as the session took longer than anticipated, we had to abandon the visit to G&S Valves in Godalming and postpone that for another day. As a result, Shaun treated us to a tour of Southern Rebores, which he also owns and is on the same site, and showed us how many different operations they are able to undertake when reconditioning an engine. Finally, we thanked everyone there for their support and set off back for Oxford, with the Volvo gearbox continuing to complain as we battled through heavy rain – and every intention of changing the ATF fluid at the earliest opportunity!

Wednesday was a more relaxed day back in Oxford at the HQ, as we only had to focus on prepping things for the rest of the week, and draining and refilling the Volvo gearbox. With the help of Martin Brown, the farmer, the English Wheel was loaded onto Stuart Howard’s borrowed trailer, ready for Saturday, and the Elva was given a leak-down test and check over after its dyno testing. The XC90’s gearbox was given its partial ATF transfusion, and to our relief, it made for a dramatic improvement!

Thursday took us on one of perhaps the most interesting trips of the week, to Racelogic, the home of Vbox, in Buckingham. We were met at the door by the owner and long-time OUMF supporter, Julian Thomas, who proceeded to
give us an eye-opening guided tour of Racelogic main office. The tour started in his office where he very generously gifted us yet more very expensive and capable pieces of VBOX hardware, and showed us the latest prototypes soon to be in production following further testing. He took us through the various rooms and offices, all a hive of activity. We were also told about some of the other areas of industry that Racelogic are leaders in. Namely their 3D positioning systems for indoor/GPS- denied environments (e.g. Tiger Woods’ indoor golf league for which they do the indoor tracking) and a very interesting device called the LabSat which allows repeatable and easy testing of GPS systems. We were also shown the very impressive AirPixel system which has the ability to make some spectacular and augmented reality visuals for live sport or even animation. Julian concluded our fascinating visit back in his office, giving us an overview of how AI has recently radically changed how he works, and how the company operates, allowing a vast amount more work to be done – especially coding and programming - in much shorter time spans. It was a real ‘tour de force’ by Julian, a man who is evidently at the cutting edge of the AI revolution, and it gave us all a great deal to think about – and at least two of the team to seriously consider applying to work there!

Leaving Julian with a Motorsport Touch unit, our sincere thanks - and a laminate of the Riley on two wheels to brighten his office! - we set off for Bicester for a tour of Westfield Chesil, who build Lotus Seven and Porsche Speedster lookalikes. OUMF graduate and senior technician Francisco Amoral met us at the door, and very kindly spent an hour and a half showing us all the different processes involved in making these exciting cars. 

On Friday, we travelled to AP Racing in Coventry for the day, where we were given an all- encompassing tour of their factory and test facilities by OUMF graduates Dave Constable–Berry, now Principal Design Engineer, and Senior Brake Designer, Niall Geoghegan. After a very kind pizza lunch in the boardroom, we were given a very fascinating
talk by Dave about all aspects of road and race clutches (they supply many F1 teams), and an equally comprehensive address by Niall about braking systems. We eventually left with a great deal of knowledge gained, and the hope that we might enjoy some significant support from AP Racing in the near future – and that this was a very fitting end to Action Week for most of the team.

However, on Saturday, the postscript to the week saw a limited number of members travel with the English Wheel to Cambridge, to the home of Alan and Jo Coombs, who are OUMF founder members. Alan’s lovely cars include 5 vintage Lanchesters housed in the magnificent garage that he built single-handedly (a thing of wonder in itself). He has become a leading authority on the marque and wants to learn how to master the wheeling machine to restore the bespoke body panels. Once the venerable English Wheel was unloaded into his large workshop, and we had had a guided tour of his cars, he kindly took the whole team out for a spin in his latest acquisition, a landaulette limousine from the 1920’s. Originally the property of a maharaja, this huge car accommodated all of us in style, and provided a very entertaining trip round the lanes as Alan wrestled with its crash gearbox (i.e. no synchros!)

Meanwhile, Jo had been preparing a splendid dinner of roast lamb and all the trimmings, and we had a lovely evening around the dining room table with their two children, James and Willow, feasting on perfectly cooked roast potatoes - of which Alan is a huge fan! Afterwards, we stayed the night and woke on Sunday to a hearty breakfast before thanking Jo and Alan for their generous hospitality and then leaving at the same time as Alan, as he had to get to Heathrow to catch a flight for a week’s business trip to California. And so another highly enjoyable action-packed Action Week ended – with a great variety of trips and visits made to sponsors, supporters, and events that gave a wonderful insight into many aspects of the automotive industry, and so much was learned in the process. We give many thanks to all those who royally entertained us, supported us with new tools and equipment, and taught us so much in the course of just one week – and to Ding for organising such a brilliant extravaganza to kick off OUMF’s 2026!

James Dunn. First year engineering, Oxford Brookes