Welcome to the home of Alex Gassman, an aspiring young racing driver aged 16, competing in his first ever season of MR2 saloon car racing. Alex has scored excellent race results from his very first race, briefly taking first place on a couple of occasions in his debut race at Silverstone, and has since secured second and third place finishes. Now his engine problem has been diagnosed and fixed he is confident of some even stronger finishes during the season.

Alex has demonstrated a remarkable ability to jump in a variety of cars and to drive them very competitively and yet safely and consistently within just a few laps. So far he has successfully driven cars such as his MR2, a Subaru WRX and the ALPINA B10 V8.

Alex is seeking additional sponsorship to help him further his experience. The benefits of higher level sponsorship include passenger laps with Alex at race speed in his race car, an experience  not easily forgotten! Read more about these benefits here.

This year, Alex is competing in the Red Dragon Race and Track Club Toyota Mk1 MR2 Racing series www.mr2racing.com   This is a class solely for Mk1 MR2s and for drivers aged 16 and up, meaning Alex is the youngest driver in the series by a couple of years.

The series is one of the cheapest types of motorsports around, and as a result modifications over the standard road car are limited, putting more pressure on the drivers to win the races, rather than relying on superior machinery. Alex’s car is maintained and transported by Kevin Poole Motorsport, specialists in racing and maintaining the Mk1 MR2.

This site is updated regularly with all of the latest news on Alex’s races.

Latest News:

Wednesday 16 July: Graham Walden of Black Cat Racing very generously made his TVR Tuscan race car available to Alex to test drive at Mallory Park. The car had 350 bhp and was running on full racing slick tyres. Alex had about 20 minutes driving the TVR and it took him a few laps to get to grips with driving a car completely different to anything he’d experienced before, but by the end of the test session he was putting in some competitive lap times. Video available here, photos and report coming very soon.

Monday 14 July: Alex drove his Dad’s ALPINA B10 V8 at Donington Park as part of the Sytner track day invitation to BMW and ALPINA owners. The car’s weight and relatively soft suspension offered some real challenges when fully committing to Craner curves, but Alex was up to the task and managed to extract everything the B10 could offer, overtaking a couple of E46 M3s in the process. Alex also gave rides to some of his fellow Alpina Register members. Alex reported the new Goodyear F1 tyres to be a disappointment, not offering the same levels of grip and feel as the Michelin Pilot Sport tyres used on the Odiham track day. This confirms the theory that the Pilot Sports were designed by Michelin in conjunction with ALPINA for the B10. We will be sticking strictly to the Michelin rubber in the future.

Saturday/Sunday 28th/29th June ‘08: Thanks to Graham Poultney of Xspec Motorsport www.xspec.co.uk who very generously supported Alex by providing a Subaru WRX production spec car (with 4WD and 265 bhp) for the Nippon Challenge at Pembrey.  This was by far the most powerful car Alex has ever raced and was a valuable and exciting learning experience. Despite the  2-3 sec per lap disadvantage of running on road tyres against the semi-slicks of the competition Alex scored 3 excellent 4th places overall and 2nd in class finishes. Well done also to Graham who won all three races!

Video of an MR2 flying through the air and rolling in front of Alex here. Race report here.   Pictures here.

Monday 24 June ‘08: Comments facility added to the race review pages and a  dedicated Comments page. Now you can leave us your comments. (Keep them clean please!)

Sunday 22 June ‘08: Alex drove his Dad’s ALPINA B10 V8 at the RAF Odiham track day today. This was his first time driving a car with more than the 122bhp of his MR2, and he took to it instantly. The ALPINA is based on the E39 BMW 5 Series with a 347bhp 4.6 V8 and rear wheel drive. By the second lap he had worked out the best lines and got to grips with the on-limit handling of the car, providing thrilling passenger rides to guests throughout the day. We were all impressed with the handling of the car and Alex managing to keep up with some much more exotic and nimble machinery through the chicanes. See for yourself on the in-car video.

Saturday 7th June ‘08: Alex fights his way up from 7th place to finish 2nd at Rockingham! See the race report.

Coming Up:

Monday 25 August: The next round of the MR2 Racing series at Mallory Park. This will be the first race with the newly repaired engine which has been slightly down on power all season, so we are keen to see what difference this makes. Alex finished 2nd in his last race at Rockingham with the old engine so fingers crossed!

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