Teenage Canterbury schoolboy James Reilly is the youngest European driver to have completed a 24-hour race - but came close to not even qualifying!

Reilly is part of the elite sports programme at Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys.

He became the youngest driver to compete in the BRSCC Citroen C1 Endurance 24-hour race at Silverstone in May when he was the youngest driver outside of America to start a 24-hour motor race.

He completed just over seven hours of driving across four stints. His fastest lap time was 3min04.897sec during his final stint.

But he revealed: “I’d just done my GCSEs. I had two exams on the day we were meant to be travelling up to Silverstone so we cut it extremely fine before qualifying.

“We had four minutes to spare before I wouldn’t have been able to qualify for the race! It was very tight.”

Despite his late arrival after his mandarin exam, Reilly’s experience at Silverstone still proved to be a memorable one.

He reflected: “That was brilliant to be able to drive for such a long time, going into the night. I haven’t really experienced anything like that before at all.

“It was oddly calming. It’s strange to say when you are going so fast but being able to drive for hours on end was a great experience.”

He conceded driving for such long periods of time comes with its challenges, though.

He said: “The race we did at Donington, it was reaching almost 60 degrees in the car! So I was struggling not to faint while going around for part of the time.

“That was completely different, I had never really had to fight as much with conditions as much as that, but I just pushed through.

“It’s a whole different ball game because you are doing the same thing every lap and you’re perfecting it as much as you can but you are dealing with external situations, as well, more than you would in a sprint race. You are perfecting the lap basically.”

Reilly first started racing when he was eight.

“I have been karting since I was eight-years-old. My friend took me to his birthday party when I was seven. I really wanted to start karting then but I had to wait until I was eight,” he explained.

“Then I had been doing it regularly - like every two weeks - since then and developed through doing that.

"We did a year of owner-driver karts so buying your own kart and running it around the country.

“Then we thought ‘This is pretty comparable to what we would be paying to get into cars - why not just try that?’ It’s been brilliant just doing that.”

During that time, Reilly, who says Jenson Button is his main role model, has raced across plenty of tracks in the UK.

He said: “I have been to a lot of tracks, all over the country now. My favourite track would probably be Donington Park because I have done a lot of stuff there.

“It’s very flowy. You are keeping the car at a high speed, going through loads of corners rather than at a hairpin and then slowing right down.

“You are keeping it at a high speed and trying to perfect the tiny movements rather than taking a line you are making sure the car isn’t squirming on the exit corners.”

Still aged just 16, Reilly this year opted against racing as a junior - and has gone straight into the senior ranks.

He said: “We decided to not do junior racing at all and just skipped straight into senior racing. I went into the Citroen C1 Endurance Championship and I have been going through those races one-by-one, including the 24-hour race at Silverstone.

“It’s nice to be trusted by all the older people that have been doing it a long time. Obviously I’m younger, but it’s nice that they trust me not to crash into them!

“Everyone’s really nice, which is a good thing. Everyone’s really inviting.

“I’ve been developing my driving skills which has been the main thing, getting used to the cars I have been driving.”

Reilly, who is now in the sixth form at Simon Langton, highlighted how important it is for him to be in the school’s sports programme.

He said: “It’s massively beneficial. It gives me time within the school days to work on online stuff - my website and Instagram and things like that.

“But also, every Friday, the last half of the day, they give me that to do what I need to do.

“So when we need to travel long distances for the weekends, it just allows us to leave earlier and get to where we need to be in a more manageable time-frame.”

To follow Reilly’s journey, visit his website here.