VX Racing swings into Silverstone with charity golf day

VX Racing drivers Matt Neal, Fabrizio Giovanardi and Andrew Jordan turned their hand to driving of a different kind today by taking part in a charity golf day at Whittlebury Hall Country and Golf Club. The event, as part of the build up to this weekend’s BTCC race at Silverstone was in aid of the WOMAC charity (Women On the Move Against Cancer), hosted by VX Racing technical team Triple Eight Race Engineering and supported by GMAC. Ten teams battled it out on the greens to take victory in aid of a good cause with the encouragement of the VX Racing drivers.

The day was held in the sunny Northamptonshire countryside with the teams playing in a Texas Scramble format golf game and the victors of the day were VX racing team partners ASNU, who specialise in fuel injection diagnostics. Neal, Giovanardi and Jordan were stationed on the ninth hole where teams were able to ‘gamble’ on which driver took the shot. With everything to play for, the pressure was on for the drivers to perform. Familiar with the pressures of intense competition, the trio, with their varying levels of experience played to the best of their ability, which really wasn’t very good! After playing the 18 hole PGA Matchplay Championship course at Whittlebury, the teams sat down for a two course lunch followed by a charity auction and a question and answer session with the drivers.

Several other familiar faces to the BTCC joined the event to raise money with Johnny Herbert, Tom Onslow-Cole, Paul O’Neil, and Tim Harvey all swinging clubs for charity. The event was hosted by ITV’s Louise Goodman, who was present filming as part of a feature for this weekend’s BTCC ITV4 coverage. Louise herself is a patron of the charity WOMAC, a charity run by the women of motorsport to raise funds for cancer research.

Italian Giovanardi, who has very limited experience of golf, commented about the day, “I am really quite bad at golf; the last time I played was here at Whittlebury over a year ago and I certainly haven’t improved, I think I’ll stick to race car driving! It was a good fun day though, the sun was shining and the teams all enjoyed the experience (even though we were pretty rubbish!) but the most important thing is we were raising money for charity.”

Neal, who is a regular golf player added, “We had a really good day today, I enjoy a bit of golf and the opportunity to relax and play informally with the guests was great. The gentle exercise was a good warm up for the races at the weekend and a great way to raise awareness and money for such a good cause.”

Youngster Jordan who had never played a game of golf prior to today’s event summed up saying, “I had tried to get in a bit of practice earlier in the week to prepare myself, but I don’t think it was enough. I’d never played golf before, and I’m certainly not that great, but I did actually enjoy my time out on the course today. Matt was showing me how it’s done and I think I’m a bit better now. It was great to come and help Triple Eight raise money for WOMAC.”