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The car was a Ray 98Z, a Formula Ford from Ray Race Cars built around the 1.8-litre Ford Zetec — the engine that led Formula Ford from 1993 until the Duratec took over in 2006. It carried 55 for the rest of 2012 and 58 from 2013; the number came with me when I moved to GT.

I joined for the last two meetings of 2012. At the first, on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit in August, I came away from the Sunday race with one of the club's two Driver of the Day awards — given to the driver who makes up the most places from qualifying without finishing on the podium. A fortnight later came a third and a fourth in class at Cadwell Park.

2013 was the full season. It opened at Donington Park in MonoZtec, a new class for cars built to the Formula Ford Zetec regulations; from the second meeting, at Brands Hatch, the car ran in Mono 1800 and scored in all twelve races that followed. The best of them was second in class on the Grand Prix circuit in May, and at Castle Combe in August a climb from the back of the grid to eleventh overall brought a second Driver of the Day. The season finished with second place in Mono 1800, behind Paul Britten, and fourth in the SUNBAC Nova award for novices.

Between the two seasons came the Formula Ford Festival, the end-of-season Formula Ford meeting at Brands Hatch, in its Zetec class: a wet quarter-final, a damp semi-final, and eighth in the final from tenth on the grid.

The first weekend, on the Brands Hatch Indy circuit in April, was a run of firsts: first race in a GT car, first SuperCup, first time in the G55 in the wet. I qualified twentieth of twenty. The rain arrived with the start, I was on wet tyres when others had gambled on slicks, and by the end of the second lap I was fourteenth. Tenth overall and sixth in the Am class was my best overall finish of the SuperCup season.

I raced at six of the eight meetings; Thruxton and Knockhill went on without me. The best class result came in the rain on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit in October — fifth in the Am class — and the year finished seventh of sixteen in the Am standings, with 226 points. Century's Nathan Heathcote won the class.

I shared the car with Emily Linscott, then a teenager: she was the professional in a Pro/Am pairing, and I was the amateur. We joined for the second half of the season and took a Class 3 podium in our first race together, at Oulton Park in June — third in class, ahead of the Porsche that went on to win the Class 3 title — then two more class thirds at Snetterton in August.

The October round at Oulton Park went no further than qualifying, in the rain; we started neither race. The finale was Britcar's night meeting on the Brands Hatch Indy circuit in November, and we won Class 3 in both races: sixth overall after a wet hour in the dark on the Saturday, then fourth overall in the two-hour race on the Sunday, ahead of both Ferrari 488 Challenge cars. We were the only points-scoring car in Class 3 that weekend, and finished ahead of Team HARD's two invitation G55s in both races. In all, three of the eight rounds brought five class podiums, two of them wins.

The half-hour after the chequered flag is the part I came for: the data download lands, and you work out what actually happened against what it felt like in the car. It's the same shape as a post-incident review — better fun, and better catering.

Endurance racing adds strategy, trust and deep team working. Someone else drives your car for half the race, and the result belongs to everyone who touched it.