Capers on the continent 

A team of the Honda Formula 1 race crew proved that the era of the great European road trip isn’t over by driving two trabants over 2000km from the Hungarian GP to the team’s UK HQ. For those of you that don’t know, a trabant is a two stroke motorcycle engined car made out of plastic. 

Kevin Poole, Gary Holland, Adam Cobley and Guy Thomas undertook the trip, supported by Paul Harris & Chris Fry. With a budget of £500 they bought a trabant during their working week in Hungary and then headed home at an average speed of 50kph to Brackley, Northamptonshire - a short trip of 2,387 km. The trip took a total of 65 hours.

Kevin Poole explained his motivation behind supporting FSID:

"We have chosen to do this for the FSID as this is a charity that has been helping people close to us through some very difficult times"

The trip began with the first trabant breaking down little more than 80 kilometres into the trip. The crew managed to limp it to Vienna on Sunday night where a lengthy rebuild took place until three in the morning.

The cars then set on the journey across to the Czech Republic, into Germany, on to Belgium and through France to the port of Calais. Hampered all the way by numerous breakdowns and run-ins with less than friendly locals and police, a huge sense of achievement was felt when the cars reached Folkestone, and were back on English soil. The mood was high and the cars were pushed to their limit of around 60 mph all the way back until 30 miles from the team’s Brackley based headquarters the first car decided to throw a rod out of the side of the block. Undeterred, the team dragged what little was left of the two very  tired cars back to the factory for a Wednesday lunchtime reception.

The team would like to extend thanks to all those in the F1 paddock who sponsored them or gave them gifts to auction, and in particular Disco and all at the Spyker F1 team, Ron Meadows at Honda, and too many people to list, as well as Bridgestone who supplied them with tyres for one of the cars. Jenson Button (pictured left) and Rubens Barrichello, the team’s drivers, both donated signed overalls to be auctioned with all proceeds topping up FSID’s trabant fund.

So far the team has raised in the region of £3000 and counting.

FSID would like to thank Kevin and all his team for their tremendous support in this most original of challenges.

It is not too late to show your appreciation to the team. Visit www.justgiving.com/KevinPoole to sponsor them now.