Club History

Founded  soon after WW2, the Midpack Racing Drivers' Club has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous autosport fortune for 60 years. 

Situated half way between the picturesque English Home Counties villages of Fammerley Pack and Sikse Pack, Midpack is the historic home of RAF Midpack. This famous airfield was home to many RAF squadrons, including American Eagles, Commonwealth, home and European pilots in the dark days of the Battle of Britain, and it was here that the MRDC made its home once the horror machinery of war had been cleared away, leaving just big engines and flat concrete behind.

"Never was so much owed by so many to so few" said Winston Churchill, and sadly, the same soon applied to the MRDC as club subscriptions failed to meet the lavish catering bills that started to accrue. In spite of the ongoing financial challenges, the club  scraped along through its formative years taking part in local hill climbs, autotests and Saturday Night Crusies, until it suddenly shot to prominence when Argentinian playboy and race ace Juan-Manuel Fandango made it his home in the 1950's. 

Fandango Wins !

 Fandango Wins Again !!

Success followed success but this golden age was too good to last. And so it  proved when tragedy struck as local aristocrat, Lord Ponsonby, discovered that when Fandango talked about "preferring a loose tail" he wasn't talking about oversteer as much as he was about Lady Ponsonby. Pistols at dawn across the misty infield between the main runways resolved the issue (in Fandango's favour) but a grazing wound to the knee ended his race career.

Happily, Fandango stayed with the club and still serves today as the chief test driver, for it was he that won more than £1m in the National Lottery in 1995. Half he invested in the "Midpack Cinnamon Swirl and Rocky Road Company" and the other half he generously donated for the provision of a new club house.

Exciting plans were laid ...

but as we know, the difference between Theory and Practice is that, in Theory, they're the same, and in Practice, they're not - and so it was with the theory and practice of club house construction. The Club House today ...

Sure we were a little disappointed, but the club is based in Britain and we're plucky and so we make ourselves as comfortable as we can, with a luxuriously appointed interior that serves both the minds and the bodies of our members.

With areas for relaxation both inside and out, the Club House holds many secrets, the most closely guarded of which is surely the combination for the lock on the CSCU - the Cinnamon Swirl Containment Unit.

2010 sees new challenges for the Club as it takes on the mighty teams of the GMWC, but with Club Engineer Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson on board, we feel 100% confident that the 2010A season will offer many opportunities to build character for those that climb aboard an MRDC GP car.

Andy Jones

Club President.