It was a plate when it was presented to me. A great big silver plate. This was new, I thought to myself as I held it and smiled for the cameras.
After the podium, the clerk who had presented the trophy came over and talked to me. He explained the history of Henry Rilett, a long-standing Clerk at Snetterton who dedicated decades of his life to motorsport. The clerk talking to me had actually worked under Henry for years, which somehow made hearing the story feel even more personal.
Sadly Henry is no longer with us, but he left an amazing legacy. He designed the trophy himself and over the years it has been awarded to a number of single-seater racers. More recently it has been presented to National Formula Ford 1600 drivers racing at Snetterton.
As I listened, I suddenly felt incredibly pleased to have won it. Not just because it came from winning a race, but because clerks and officials have played such a big part in my own motorsport upbringing.
I remember Drew at Shenington explaining what I had done wrong in a Cadet kart and, more importantly, why. I remember asking Dan at PFI why I hadn’t received a penalty after re-joining the circuit when I thought I had cut the track. I’ve learned so much from clerks and officials over the years, both from the good decisions I’ve made and the bad ones.
I wasn’t always perfect. I’ve made mistakes and had some bad calls, but I would go and ask why. If I had done something wrong, I wanted to understand it and know what I could have done differently. Sometimes I learned that an incident might have been caused by another driver, but there was still something I could have done to calm the situation or stop it developing. That knowledge stayed with me.
I got to know some of the officials well enough that they even started pranking me. I remember a test session at PFI in the wet when there were only about three karts on the entire circuit and suddenly they were ‘investigating’ my number. I think by then they knew exactly how seriously I took anything coming from Race Control!
I’ve never really feared a clerk. I respect them and try to learn from them. I want to take as much knowledge and advice from people like that as I possibly can.
So to win a trophy created by a clerk who gave so much of his life to motorsport and Formula Ford was genuinely special. This one meant something to me.
I could only keep the Henry Rilett Trophy for a short time before handing it back, so before I did, I took photographs of the front and the back. They weren’t really for social media or anybody else. They were for me.
There are some mega names engraved on that plate and I’m incredibly proud that my name now becomes part of its history, but strangely it wasn’t really the names I wanted to photograph. It was what the plate represented.
Normally I think a trophy is brilliant, enjoy winning it and then move on. That’s just how I am. This one has been different because I keep thinking about it. I owe a lot of my racing knowledge to clerks and officials I’ve met through karting and car racing. They have a difficult job and, let’s face it, us racing drivers aren’t always the easiest people to deal with or completely honest about what happened!
But if you stop, listen and actually talk to them, there is an incredible amount to learn. They have seen thousands of races, thousands of incidents and thousands of drivers. Behind every decision there is experience, and behind people like Henry Rilett there is a lifetime spent giving something back to the sport.
Maybe that’s why this trophy feels different.
When I look at the photographs of that big silver plate, I don’t just see a trophy.
I can almost see the stories in it.
