The Birkett Relay: The Race Where Being Fast Isn’t Everything

Imagine turning up at Silverstone in a fairly ordinary racing car. Perhaps a Mazda MX-5. Maybe a BMW. Possibly something that looks suspiciously like it should have been scrapped in 1997. You arrive at the circuit and discover you’re sharing the track with Radicals, Caterhams, touring cars and all sorts of other machinery. There could be nearly 300 cars and drivers involved. The race lasts six hours. And, somehow, the fastest team doesn’t necessarily win. Welcome to the Birkett Relay. British motorsport’s annual demonstration that we can make absolutely anything into a competition. Including mathematics.

Six Hours. Seventy Teams. Absolute Chaos.

This Saturday, 24 October, the 750 Motor Club is holding its annual Birkett Six-Hour Relay at Silverstone. It’s Britain’s largest annual motor race. The event regularly attracts around 70 teams and nearly 300 cars and drivers. Thankfully, they don’t all start the race at once. That would be less motorsport and more a particularly expensive traffic jam. Instead, each team has between three and six cars, with only one competing on the circuit at a time. When one car comes into the pits, another can head out. Simple enough. Except every team is trying to complete as many laps as possible over six hours, while simultaneously managing different drivers, cars, reliability and pit stops. So you might have a relatively ordinary hatchback sharing the circuit with something considerably faster. For six hours. What could possibly go wrong?

The Fastest Car Doesn’t Necessarily Win

This is where the Birkett gets interesting. There are effectively two competitions happening at once. The first is the scratch race. That one’s straightforward. Complete the most laps in six hours. Win. Lovely.

Then there’s the handicap competition. And this is where somebody has clearly looked at motorsport and decided it wasn’t complicated enough. Before the race, teams are given a number of credit laps based on the cars and drivers they’re entering. Those credit laps are added to the laps they actually complete. The idea is to give teams running slower machinery a realistic opportunity to compete against considerably faster cars. So a team driving relatively modest hatchbacks could, in theory, beat a team running much faster machinery. Not because they’re magically faster. But because they’ve performed better against their handicap. Essentially, there’s a race happening on the circuit and another race happening inside somebody’s spreadsheet. And both matter.

Motorsport’s Most Complicated Head Start

The clever thing about this is that nobody actually gets to start the race early. The slower cars don’t disappear up the road for 45 minutes while the faster cars sit in the pits looking annoyed. Everybody competes together. The advantage exists in the results calculation. And the handicap isn’t simply decided by looking at a car and thinking: “That looks a bit rubbish. Have 20 laps.”
The organisers consider the cars, drivers and expected performance before assigning the credits. Of course, that makes the handicap itself rather important. If a team performs considerably better than expected, it could be in a very strong position. If it underperforms, all those lovely credit laps might not be enough. Which creates an interesting challenge. You’re not necessarily trying to beat the fastest car. You’re trying to beat what everyone expected your team to achieve. I rather like that. Although I suspect explaining the results to somebody who’s never watched the event before could require a whiteboard. Possibly two.

Endurance Racing Has a Habit of Humbling People

My first proper race was EnduroKA at Donington Park in 2024. I was sharing a Ford KA with two other drivers. We had quite a day. Safety cars. A radio failure. A puncture. I even contributed a track-limits penalty, which was thoughtful of me. Then, towards the end, an electrical problem involving a connector near the pedals brought the whole thing to a rather disappointing stop. We finished 23rd. Well, we were classified 23rd. The car itself had decided it had done enough. That weekend taught me something fairly important. You can have decent drivers. You can have a competitive car. You can make sensible strategic decisions. But if a tiny electrical component decides to retire halfway through the afternoon, the rest becomes largely irrelevant. Endurance racing isn’t just about speed. It’s about keeping the thing working. And when you’re running multiple cars as a team, there are rather more opportunities for something to go wrong. Excellent.

The Brilliant Thing About Mixed-Car Racing

Most championships try to make the cars reasonably equal. The same model. The same engine specification. Control tyres. Similar performance. Which makes sense. But I do like the idea of a race where completely different cars are competing together. Imagine driving your little hatchback around Silverstone and having a Radical appear in your mirrors. Then another one. Then a Caterham. Then a BMW. Then somebody in a car that seems to have been assembled from the contents of a particularly adventurous shed. You’d spend half your time racing and the other half trying to work out what was coming past. There’s also something entertaining about the idea that you don’t necessarily need the fastest car to achieve a good result. You need a well-prepared car. A reliable team. Consistent drivers. And a strategy that doesn’t fall apart the moment somebody discovers they’ve forgotten to put fuel in something. Those are all proper motorsport challenges. Arguably more useful ones than simply finding another 50 horsepower. Although I’d still quite like another 50 horsepower.

Seventy-Five Years of Racing. Seventy-Six Events.

The Birkett dates back to 1951. It was created by Holland “Holly” Birkett, one of the founding members of the 750 Motor Club. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the six-hour event. It’s also the 76th Birkett. Obviously.

Apparently, they celebrated the 50th anniversary by holding an additional 12-hour race. Because six hours clearly wasn’t enough. I quite like that. There’s something wonderfully British about a motorsport event which has spent three-quarters of a century bringing together increasingly unlikely combinations of cars and drivers. And then occasionally making the race twice as long for no particularly sensible reason.

Could I Actually Have a Go?

Potentially. The event is open to eligible closed-wheel racing cars and suitably qualified competitors, subject to the regulations. So it’s not an unrestricted free-for-all where you can simply turn up in your road car and join in. Which is probably for the best. But it does create an interesting opportunity for club racers who already own cars. Rather than entering a normal championship round, you could get together with other drivers and form a team. Different cars. Different drivers. One common objective. For somebody like me, who’s trying to buy a Classic Mini and get racing regularly, it’s an interesting idea. Although I’m currently struggling to work out how to buy and transport one race car from Islay. Perhaps assembling another two to five cars and a complete race team is getting slightly ahead of myself. Let’s successfully purchase the first one. Then we’ll see.

Sometimes the Result Isn’t the Whole Story

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about finally getting into real racing is discovering just how much happens beyond the actual driving. At Brands Hatch in August, I set the fastest lap in both Classic Mini races. I didn’t win either. Fourth and fifth. Which proves that being fast over one lap and successfully racing other people are two very different things. The Birkett takes that idea considerably further. It’s not just about finding the fastest driver. It’s about putting together a team that can deliver over six hours. Making good decisions. Keeping the cars running. And, in the handicap competition, doing better than you’re expected to. That last bit particularly appeals to me. Because you don’t need to own the fastest car on the grid to have something meaningful to race for. And in a sport where buying speed can become a fairly effective method of emptying your bank account, that’s rather refreshing.

Worth a Watch This Weekend

The Birkett Relay takes place on Saturday at Silverstone, and the 750 Motor Club has it scheduled for livestream coverage with Alpha Live. Six hours of racing. An enormous mixture of cars. Teams constantly swapping machinery. Two different overall competitions. And a handicap system which means the winner might not be the team you’d expect. It’s certainly something a bit different. And having experienced how quickly an endurance race can go wrong myself, I suspect there’ll be plenty happening over those six hours. I’d quite like to race in it one day. Although before that, I should probably concentrate on finding a Mini, paying for it, getting it off Islay and persuading it to survive an entire race. Four fairly significant challenges.

And that’s before I start looking for team-mates.