Well, it’s Monday morning and back to reality working in the NHS today, but what a fabulous weekend I’ve had at Autosport. Apart from winning races I can’t think of many better weekends.

As a nominee for the BWRDC Goldstars club award (there is also an Elite award) I was nervously hoping for the best on Friday morning when the announcement was to be made on the MSA stand by racing legend John Surtees OBE. Judge Ian Titchmarsh had made his decision after considering each of the nominee’s achievements in the previous season and in front of a Motors TV crew and many of the UK racing press the gold envelope revealed my name.

Wow! The last time I smiled so much was when I had a double win at Donington Park last year. What a great feeling, and many thanks to the BWRDC for creating such a great initiative for women in motorsport; thanks also to the various sponsors, including Donington Park (test day), Piers Dowell (bespoke helmet design), Stand 21 (flame proof bra – yes that’s correct!) Millers Oil (205 litres of oil), GPR (cash voucher), IWI (stopwatch), Lucas oil (cleaning products), Izone (simulator time) and not least Twenty-four seven who will be redesigning my web page.

On top of all that, highly successful ALMS racer Liz Halliday will be my mentor for the next twelve months. Could it get much better?

Well actually the weekend continued in a similar vein. At the Jaguar drivers awards dinner on Saturday my regular and valued sponsor, Jaguar Classic Parts, confirmed their support for next season competing in my classic Jaguar XJ-S and XJ saloon. In addition, back at ASI David Price of System Store Solutions (bespoke garage and storage design) also came on board and Jaguar World Monthly confirmed that my writing skills would be used again in 2012. That means I will certainly be competing on track this year and several other deals are still in negotiation so watch this space.

I can now concentrate of raising funds to compete in the GT Cup, where I can test my skills in some more modern machinery in what is a highly competitive and well supported series, covered by Motors TV. This is now my main goal and being such an affordable and sensibly priced series, GT Cup offers a great opportunity for companies to expand their media and brand presence, entertain clients, create incentives for employees and have a lot of fun in the process working with one of the UK’s most successful female racers.

In the meantime the V12 engine will be going back into the XJ-S and a bit of weight loss for the XJ saloon, and me, is in order.

Finally I would also like to congratulate Sarah Reader, my co-Goldstars winner, who took the Elite award for her exploits in Europe last year.

Gail Hill

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