A TWENTY-TWO-year-old car with more than 110,000 miles on the clock might not seem the most obvious racing vehicle . . but then then the ‘24 Hours of LeMons’ is not your average race.

A parody of the world-famous 24-hour LeMans endurance race, it features old bangers instead of racing cars.

More than 170 teams lined up to do battle over more than 16 hours at the 2.52-mile Sonoma Raceway in California.

Among the starters were Scots Rory Gammell and Sam Smith and their friends John Austin and Wolfgang Muller in a 1996 Mazda MX-5 named Nessie – complete with a Saltire across the bonnet and a giant ‘See You Jimmy Hat’.

Rory, who has lived in San Francisco for the past three years, having grown up in Morham, south-east of Haddington, described the event as “one of the most exciting weekends of my life”.

He said: “I was up first on the Saturday morning in the wet, with 173 cars out on the track all at the same time.

“There were all sorts of crazy cars out there, most of which were alarmingly fast.

“We even encountered a couple of Volkswagen campervans that had been race tuned with Porsche suspension and very high-powered engines which defied all reasonable physics.

“It was a huge adrenaline rush – a mixture of terror and excitement in equal parts.

“At one point on Saturday, one of our drivers was hit hard by the Trump car – a black Ford Sierra with ‘Trumpaco’ written on the front in the Texaco font.

“Nessie faced a fair dent but lived on after a battery replacement but the Trump car faced a mangled radiator and was out for the rest of the race. Nessie killed Trump!”

Unfortunately, with the finish line in sight, Nessie’s race came to a close. Problems with the clutch meant the quartet had to race on Sunday only using third gear.

Former Compass School pupil Rory said: “Little Nessie hung on well, posting some surprisingly good lap times given the circumstances, but her clutch finally packed in just one hour from the end.

“Still, we had two days of racing, came 134th out of 173 cars and we had such fun.

“At one point I was playing the bagpipes through our radio so Sam could hear Scotland the Brave live as he was driving.”

Rory, who is the son of Patrick Gammell, chairman of the Lamp of Lothian and Vice Lord-Lieutenant of East Lothian, told the Courier his interest in cars started in East Lothian.

The 32-year-old, who works for real estate company JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle) in San Francisco, said: “I’ve always been interested in cars, and driving fast – we’re all a bit like that in my family.

“I bought my first car at a garage in Longniddry for 50 quid (an MOT-failed Nissan Sunny) to race around the fields.

“It was red with black stripes, with no exhaust, and named Dennis.

“Back at school, I was very into design and technology and spent much of my free time building a go-kart from scratch, using some parts from an old Mini.

“That was many years ago, but the itch to build things is still very much present. When I heard about the LeMons race through a friend I knew I had to enter.”