“We Entered a 12-Hour Endurance Race as a College and Completed It!” – How West Suffolk College ME took on the Race of Remembrance
November 13, 2025West Suffolk College (WSC ME) has become the first college motorsport team to enter, and finish, an endurance event when its #100 BMW 330i, piloted by Andrew Payne, Haydn Payne, Brady Pollock and Ben Spencer, took the chequered flag at the 2025 Race of Remembrance in 47th place and 13th in Class C, having completed 243 laps.
From Student Motorsport to Endurance Competition
WSC ME had, until the weekend of the 8th and 9th of November been primarily known as an entrant in the Student Motorsport Competition, part of the BRSCC Nankang Tyre CityCar Cup Championship. The team, led by Course Director Alan Barrett, campaigned three cars in the 2025 SMo Competition and secured their first overall CityCar Cup victory when driver Brady Pollock took the chequered flag in the team’s #12 Toyota Aygo in Race Two at Silverstone.
Pollock, alongside teammates Haydn Payne in the #72 entry and Glenn Bee, who alternated with son Ben in the #119 WSC BEE Citroen C1, completed a three-car entry for WSC ME, the largest single-team entry on the 2025 SMo Competition. The trio finished fourth, sixth and tenth in the end-of-season Student Motorsport Competition standings.
The Race of Remembrance: More Than Just Laps
The Race of Remembrance, organised by Mission Motorsport and held annually on Remembrance weekend at Trac Môn Anglesey, is a 12-hour endurance event run through the night and incorporates a Service of Remembrance at the heart of all the on-track activities.
The team had made the decision early in the year that they would enter the Silverstone 24HR in May which would have made them the first college team to commit to a twice-round-the-clock enduro. Damage sustained at the start of the season, however, meant that plans had to be amended.
“We’d decided at the beginning of the year to enter the 24 Hour in May with one of the CityCars but they both sustained extensive damage with one of them being written off at the first round of the CityCar Cup which meant we couldn’t do it,” said Alan Barrett. “We then changed our plans and opted to enter the Race of Remembrance.”
Above: #100 WSC ME BMW 330i driven by Andrew Payne, Haydn Payne, Brady Pollock and Ben Spencer. (Photo: I & L Photography)
Plan A, B… and BMW
Plans then changed again when deciding what car to enter with the original intention to enter a Volvo V70 switched to a BMW 330i.
“We were going to race the Volvo V70 but because the lead time for a cage was too long, we couldn’t enter with that car. We managed to get a more realistic lead time for a cage for the BMW so that was our choice.”
Youth + Experience = Perfect Line-Up
For the driver line-up, WSC ME went with a mix of youth and experience. Teammates in the Student Motorsport Competition Brady Pollock and Haydn Payne, along with Ben Spencer, 2025 CityCar Cup champion, represented drivers at the start of their career while Haydn’s dad Andrew, a highly experienced racer, performance car driver, racing instructor and series organiser, provided the benefit of his many seasons of competition.
“It was always going to Andy, Haydn and Brady and we had another driver in mind as well but when the car switched from a CityCar to something quicker, we opened discussions with Ben and he said he’d like to do it.”
Alumni-Powered Pit Crew
Having competed in the Student Motorsport Competition for the past four seasons, the team had several alumni that it could call upon to staff the team for its Anglesey adventure.
“It was actually really good because we had students from the last four years come and help us so we had students from 2022, 2023, 2024 and this past season,” said Alan. “We were also delighted to have the support of ex-student Ben Ganniford who now works for historic racing specialists Complete Motorsport Solutions and, with his experience of endurance racing, his input was invaluable.”
Despite having many years of experience of sprint racing, the demands of endurance competition meant that the weekend did not go without its challenges.
When Everything Went Wrong (But They Kept Going)
“At one point, we didn’t think we were going to finish,” said Alan. “If it could go wrong, it did go wrong! Testing initially went well and then the clutch exploded and it went on from there really.
“We shared a garage with Bromley Motorsport and they had a difficult weekend as well and we ended up doing more laps than them. On paper, we should have been the ones in the top three of the group but that’s not how it turned out.”
So, what lessons did Alan Barrett and the team take away from their first foray into endurance motorsport?
“Preparation would be far different,” said Alan. “It’s all in the preparation and planning because when you have a car you haven’t raced before and you put it under the stress of an endurance race, things were coming loose that we hadn’t anticipated. So, it’s the learning curve of how you are going to prepare differently.
“Would we have liked to have finished higher up than we did? Yes, we would but ultimately, we entered a 12-hour endurance race as a college, which we don’t think has been done before, and completed it. We were near the bottom end of it but we still managed to finish and that’s our positive.”
2026: Bigger, Bolder, Plus Endurance
Alan Barret and West Suffolk College ME have not unveiled their 2026 plans yet but the team has an ambitious concept to develop not just team members and students but drivers as well and will undoubtedly be looking for more challenges.
“We’ll 100% be back at the Race of Remembrance next year,” explained Alan Barrett. “We’re moving that way, as evidenced by our entry in the SW Motorsports ClubSport Trophy at Snetterton in July. (Pollock and Payne finished 18th in the #2 Citroen DS3 Cup entry.) It was partly promotion to promote the DS3 to the BRSCC but it showed a natural progression from CityCars to DS3s so it was done with that in mind.
“We are looking at endurance racing for next year because we can implement our plan to have more than one novice driver out at once.”
