The DAM Racing Porsche 944 took its first win at the weekend at Mallory Park. Unfortunately, I wasn't driving it, but it does at least show how far the car has developed from last season and it's promising that, should I get to race it again, we won't be struggling towards the bottom of the field!

Brett, who I shared the driving with last season, has been racing solo this year and the car had a lot of work done to it over the winter, plus plenty of developments between rounds, so has been constantly improving. Brett was particularly happy with the whole package at Mallory and, even with 170,000 miles on the engine, the car looks set to continue this form.

Thanks to Matthew Barrington for the pic!

The famous Le Mans 24 hour race is less than a week away and I'm taking my dad down there (his first time!) staying with the lovely folk at Speed Chills.

As is traditional, I've been stickering up the car for the journey down to La Sarthe. It's more subtle, and nowhere near as intricate as the liveries I've done for my boss's Porsches the last couple of years, but my 350Z has been stickered using hand cut strips from a tenner's worth of grey vinyl - a bargain I think, if a little bit Fast and Furious!

The sunstrip is an official Le Mans item of 2006 vintage (before the ACO rebranded), but it has been sitting around in my drawer for ages and looks the part!

Well the racing season is getting itself underway and I've already been to the opening rounds of British Touring Car, British F3 and British GT (the last of which I'd very much love to have a crack at) but as yet, I have no track action confirmed for the year. I'm not sobbing back the tears just yet, however, because I've been a very lucky boy and got myself a seat in one of the cars for the 2011 Conti4x4Trophy!

The trophy has been running in Europe since 2007, but it's the first time that Continental has opened it to UK entrants. Partnered up with my team-mate (and fiancee), Claire I spent a sunny Saturday earlier this month at the Land Rover test facility at Gaydon for the qualifier event - off-roading and completing challenges to eventually be whittled down from the 28 lucky qualifying teams to one of the 14 even-luckier finalists who will get to drive a Hummer across the Sahara desert and the Atlas mountains. Looks like we have a adventure of epic proportions ahead of us. I'll keep you posted!

Throughout last season, I sent out a few press releases to our local news providers and collected the clippings of any stories they ran, but living where I do, only ever got to see the Redditch Advertiser and some online stories.

While searching for something entirely unrelated today, however, I discovered that the Redditch Standard helpfully archive all of their publications so that, in the quiet off-season, people like me can find those articles that through one reason or another, never made it to them in hard copy.

As such, the news for this entry comes from the Redditch Standard, and more specifically, the Redditch Standards of 28th May 2010 and 17th September 2010. Both clippings have nice big pics too. These have been added to the clipping section of the 2010 Gallery - have a peek.

Spent a full weekend fully snowed in so have made the most of it with dinner and festive ales at the local and plenty of time near roaring fires. Thought I'd also add a little update too.

My media accreditation's through for Autosport International in January so once again I can look forward to walking several miles around the NEC, looking at the big, carbon-winged wonders which I would love to have a drive (hey, even a sit) in when the new season begins! Plans for next year are still unmade and a little too far off to ponder, but in the meantime, I'm whiling away the cold, short days with a bit of web design and possibly rather too much time perfecting my lines on Gran Turismo 5. I'm edging my way towards the Endurance series and in desparate need of a single-seater and something which is both historic and very fast, as my 70s Corvette isn't cutting it against the GT40. On the upside, my in-game 350Z is massively more powerful than my road-going equivalent but, fancy picture aside, not as easy to drive!

The DAM Racing team have reason to be pretty happy with themselves this weekend after we put in a solid performance as the CSCC Future Classics series hit Silverstone - the circuit I've been waiting to tick off my 'to-do' list since my last Jedi round of 2006 was moved to Rockingham at the last minute. The new engine - a 3 litre, along with a new 2.5 gearbox and LSD had all been put in leading up to the event, and certainly seem to have had the desired effect!

A bumper entry of 37 cars meant plenty of traffic on the 1.6 mile National circuit for qualifying. Steady first laps to learn the track, having only previously driven it gently when I did my ARDS test at Silverstone over four years ago, saw us 26th. The car seemed to be performing well, the new engine pulling well and the shorter gearing giving us fantastic acceleration. Unfortunately, a 'technical infringement' (about which, the less said, the better) saw us lining up to start the race from the back of the, now 36-strong, grid.

Brett started the race and quickly began to work his way back up the field, chasing hard before coming into the pits for the half-way driver change. One of our slickest swaps yet saw me strapped in and off down the pitlane, back into battle in no time. The car really felt alive and I was finding that I could brake later into corners and accelerate harder out than many of the cars we'd previously struggled to match. Consistent lap times, setting the team's fastest lap of the race, and virtually all others within a second of it, meant that by the time the chequered flag fell, we'd climbed to 20th, a full 16 places up from where we started. An epic result after a disappointing start, and one that the team can build on.

We now have to have a think about whether we want in on the newly added Donington Park event, or whether we save budget for next season. Seems like a shame to stop now.

Some exciting news! The engine that has been underperforming in the Porsche all season has been officially diagnosed as rubbish by everyone who's looked at it, so effective immediately, it's going in the bin. To replace it, Pro-9 have sourced a 2.7 version which, in a very mild state of tune, should give us 220bhp - almost 100 more than we finished Anglesey with.

That sort of power hike should move us well up from the back of the grid where we've been floundering so far, and with a bit of testing (hint, hint) we should be able to put in a decent performance. Brett will be racing the car with the new engine at Mallory at the end of August by way of a shakedown, and I'll be back in the car, all being well, at Silverstone on 4th September. If things go well, the CSCC have just added an event at the newly-rebuilt-after-F1-farce Donington Park at the tail end of the season, so we might look at doing that too.

As expected, I didn't race at Oulton, but not because of our late entry. The team were hoping to use the test session which was definitely available, so it made sense for Brett to do the whole session and try and figure out what was going on with the car. As it happened, he only got in two laps before it broke down, so I didn't miss out on much, but he did get to race and, as has become a theme, was suffering from a terminal lack of power. In light of the car's performance, we're taking a back seat, saving some budget for next year, the plan now being to do one more round at Silverstone in September. Silverstone was the circuit I was supposed to finish my 2006 Jedi season at, but the event got moved to Rockingham at the last minute, so it'll be nice to finally race there. It's also our local track so the one we were planning to get people along to.

The upside to all this was that, being free on the weekend of the 11-13th June, I was able to make the annual pilgrimage to Le Mans for the 24 hours. Filling the passenger seat in the boss' Porsche (which had also become available at the last minute to a client dropping out), we headed down to la Sarthe with my Martini-esque livery design glowing its lime green and getting more than a few stares.

We camped with the nice folks at White Rabbit Racing for the second year running with a big-screen viewing of the awesome Audi move Truth In 24 to get us all in the mood. The event, as is often the way, went the way of Audi with a 1-2-3 for the awesome R15 Plus, the challenging Peugeots (and unfortunately the Aston Martin Lolas) all blowing up some way short of the finish. A top weekend to soften the disappointment that this year's racing seems to be fizzling out. Fingers crossed for a return to the Jedi next season...

Bit of a disappointment at the moment. We got our entry in for Oulton Park - a circuit I really want to have a crack at - and we're third reserve. It's come about because there's no real championship registration for the various CSCC series, so as long as anyone in the club has an eligible car, they can get in early and push us out of a race. The vibe on the forum is that there are usually a few reserves in on account of no-shows and qualifying breakages, but unfortunately, the team are reluctant to haul everything up to Cheshire on the off chance of getting a race. Unless people pull out before the event, it looks like we're going to have to wait until Cadwell Park at the end of July for another outing.

On the up side, the race car's gone off to a rolling road following its abysmal efforts at Anglesey and the early reports suggest we were muddling along with somewhere in the region of 120bhp, some way down on the 170bhp we supposedly started the season with. That explains why we were struggling to match a Fiesta XR2 for pace round Anglesey's sweeping first half. The team have put this down to Brett's gravel excursion at Brands Hatch knocking out the timing, so this is all being rectified in time for the next race. No rush, then...

In other news, I spent Saturday at a rainy Rockingham catching up with the Formula Jedi lot. While the conditions weren't exactly ideal, I did very much long for the chance to get back out in one of the dinky single-seaters. The old MSportUK car was present too, but newly upgraded to Mk.6 nose and wings and with a 1000cc engine in the back, being driven by newcomer Andrew Simpson. The upgrades give it a fresh face and bring it in line with the majority of competitors, but I still think it looked better in MSportUK-spec purplish-blue!

A bit of updating required here. The second round of the Future Classics series was two weeks ago on the Brands Hatch Indy circuit. Things didn't go entirely to plan, with neither of us having driven the circuit and being well off the pace in qualifying, which ended with Brett putting the car in the gravel at Paddock Hill. By race time, we'd got a bit closer to finding our way round the circuit, but were struggling to keep up with the more powerful cars out of the corners, and the car wasn't feeling entirely planted going into them. Power and handling issues to resolve!

On the plus side, I had a bit of a scrap with a Ferrari 308, sneaking past him under blue flags as the leaders came through; the track itself was good fun to drive despite being rather crowded, and our pitstop driver change handing over to Brett was far slicker than our abysmal efforts at Snetterton. On the downside, other than the DNFs, only the aforementioned Ferrari was behind us on track position. We knew we wouldn't be immediately on the pace without testing, but it would be nice to have more people to race against!