{"id":54865,"date":"2018-12-11T13:09:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T13:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/club-racing-spotlight\/"},"modified":"2019-07-19T14:35:05","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T13:35:05","slug":"club-racing-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/june-2018\/30\/club-racing-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Club Racing Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Racing is a Mitchell family bug \u2013 and Ben caught it young<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There was a sense of inevitability that Ben Mitchell would become immersed in cars. \u201cMy great-grandfather owned an Alfa Romeo RL in the 1930s,\u201d he says, \u201cbut apparently kept it hidden from his wife. My grandfather drove 500cc F3 cars and my dad raced Frazer Nashes and GNs \u2013 until about 15 years ago, when he bought a Merlyn Mk20.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After karting on a budget \u2013 \u201cI did all the preparation work myself, which was a great education\u201d \u2013 Mitchell made his car racing debut in the Merlyn at Castle Combe in 2009, since when he has carved a niche as a quick, reliable performer in historic machinery. \u201cI considered racing contemporary single-seaters in the States,\u201d he says, \u201cand tested a Formula 1000 car at Sebring. Although that went well, the sums required weren\u2019t realistic for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He subsequently spent three years with Simon Hadfield Motorsport \u2013 \u201ca fantastic experience for which I\u2019ll always be grateful: it taught me a great deal\u201d \u2013 and between racing commitments now works full time with collectible car specialist William I\u2019Anson. \u201cI\u2019ll be out in various things this year,\u201d the 24-year-old says. \u201cBRM P25, Lotus Cortina, Lotus XI, AC Cobra and whatever else I might be offered.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The prime target, though, is the Historic FF1600 title, in which he\u2019ll be racing a Merlyn owned by journalist Marcus Pye. Father Westie and younger brother Sam have both won it in the family Merlyn, while Ben has scored many wins \u2013 but as yet the championship has proved elusive. \u201cIt\u2019s probably time I tried to put that right,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":751,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167],"issue_decade":[121600],"issue_year":[121673],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54865"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222956,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54865\/revisions\/222956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54865"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=54865"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=54865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}