Once one of the favourite drivers in international-class electric on road racing, Olly Jefferies stepped away from the track a few years ago. But now, we’ve spotted him at the unofficial ‘warm-up’ for the 2023 1/12th Electric Track European Championships, which take place next weekend in the south of England!
EFRA Media Partner CTRL Sport caught up with Olly in our exclusive Facebook Live video to ask him how he is and how he found his way to the track!
EFRA: Hello, sir! Out of retirement.
Olly: Yeah.
EFRA: So this is an exclusive?
Olly: No, I think people already kind of knew.
EFRA: So what made you choose David’s car? (Zen Racing Destiny)
Olly: A few reasons, really. I’ve known David for many years, so we spoke even when I ran a different car before, we’re always chatting about stuff. So, it seemed like the obvious choice. The car’s good, Dave has got obviously a lot of knowledge about the car, about the track, he’s obviously run that quite a lot. So yeah, I think the combination of, of a few things was why I thought it might be worth doing.
EFRA: What made you want to come back racing. What was the main thing, is it just because it’s a Euros and it’s relatively close to home?
Olly: Yeah. I mean if it had been a different country or I’d have to travel to some weird and wonderful place, probably not. So yeah, it’s probably a combination of a few things, I thought, ‘actually, that could work’.
EFRA: It’s going to be really interesting because obviously, as I said before, there’s Schumacher versus the XRAY, and they’ve got lots of years of championships – or rather Schumacher took it off XRAY after many years and you’re going to put your guys into the mix as well.
Olly: Yeah, I mean, from from my side, this is slightly different to how I normally approach the race because you’ve been out of action for a little bit, but I don’t think it would take too long to sort of get back up to speed. And even I need to learn how to drive the car, the understanding of how it works, I can get from David.
EFRA: Also, the choice of car in terms of its its concept, it’s probably closest to the car that you were very, very competitive with at the Worlds in 2020. Was that some kind of reasoning behind it as well, behind what you were thinking in, in terms of choice?
Olly: No, I mean, it’s just the car could look completely different. But I know obviously David and the guys that have been running it have been doing a good job, so we know it’s is pretty fast. And yeah, just it wasn’t specifically for that reason. It was more just. You know, a combination of a few things and what I’ve seen.
EFRA: Well, we’re looking forward to seeing how it goes down.
Olly: Absolutely.
EFRA: Thanks a lot for talking with us!
Watch the complete livestream coverage here (it’s not long, promise! only 16 minutes!) for the complete interview with some of the EC favourites!
