Exactly three years ago, Cedric Bloch’s battered body was lying in a Norwich hospital bed, his racing dreams shattered – along with his back, ribs, lungs and a multitude of other injuries.
But last month, the French-born motorcycle racer made his TCR UK debut at Silverstone in an Audi RS3 LMS run by Simon Green Motorsport in conjunction with Will Powell’s Sport77 squad. It has been an arduous journey for the former British Supersport rider paralysed in a 110mph Snetterton qualifying crash.
Motorcycles were Bloch’s passion since his grandfather first put him on a dirt bike aged three, but his racing career started in cars.
“I had to wait until I had my own business and could afford it,” says the 36-year-old, who has lived in London since his university days and runs a bakery business on Routemaster buses. “I had a big accident on a motorbike when I was 20, which almost took one of my legs away, so I was like, ‘How can I get as close to a bike as possible [but safer]?’ I think a Caterham was the closest feeling I could find.”
Four years on the Caterham ladder culminated in a race-winning Sigmax campaign in 2016. After a brief dalliance with Radicals (blowing an engine before starting a race), Bloch’s yearning for two wheels sent him in another direction. “There was still something missing,” he reflects.
So he took the plunge and began racing a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R. Success came quickly, as he won the 2019 British Motorcycle Racing Club (known as Bemsee) Rookie 600 title, before taking the Clubman 600 crown in 2020’s pandemic-disrupted season. The following year’s lockdown restrictions then prompted a switch to the professional-level British Superbike-supporting Supersport category.
“Bemsee was still blocked,” explains Bloch. “So you couldn’t race, you couldn’t do anything, and they kept cancelling races. I was like, ‘What can I join? Can I move up to BSB Supersport?’”
It was a big step, but Bloch was making steady progress until a brake calliper came loose as he approached Snetterton’s Hamilton left-hander on 4 September.
“The brake calliper wiggled out,” he says. “And, once you lose one brake calliper, you have complete brake failure, which resulted in me crashing into a wall at 110mph. My back was severed, T4 complete, but it’s welded I think between T2 to T8.
“I think it was 12 or 15 cracked ribs, broken sternum, broken hand, broken leg, punctured lungs – both of them. They didn’t think I’d make it through for quite some time.”
"It’s like playing PlayStation. You get no warning as to when the wheels might lock up. But you can feather the throttle quite well"
Cedrich Bloch
Bloch spent the next 18 months in hospital, transferring from Norwich to the specialist unit at Stoke Mandeville and having further rehab at London’s Cleveland Clinic. But there was always a determination to get back into motorsport, assisted by specialist outfit Team Brit and Red Bull’s Wings For Life spinal charity.
“I was bed-bound for seven months without moving,” Bloch reveals. “When I was in hospital, Team Brit reached out to me. They even brought simulators to the hospital to play around with. I bought the Vesaro racing simulator when I was in hospital. I wanted to bring it to the hospital to help my rehab but I was not allowed.”
Team Brit helped Bloch secure a racing licence and he was even entered in the squad’s BMW 1 Series for Britcar’s six-hour race at Donington Park last year, before a team-mate crashed it in practice. The experience made Bloch realise he wanted to race by himself: “That’s when I contacted Simon Green [who he knew from Radicals]. We came up with a plan of getting into TCR touring cars.”
Green identified the ex-Simpson Racing Audi RS3 LMS as an ideal car with DSG transmission. But delays returning it from the Middle East – having to go around Africa – where it had contested the Dubai 24 Hours, were compounded by problems homologating the car with hand controls fitted by Team Brit. What would have been a very poignant debut at Snetterton in May had to be deferred.
“That’s where I crashed so I want to go back and race there,” says Bloch, who makes light of the transition to driving with hand controls: “It comes naturally. It’s very simple – you brake with the left hand, accelerate with the right hand. And then you have the gears with your thumb. It keeps both of your hands on the steering wheel at all times, unlike other hand controls.”
The only difficulty comes with feeling the brakes. “It’s 100% digital, so it’s like playing PlayStation,” he adds. “You get no warning as to when the wheels might lock up. But you can feather the throttle quite well.
“The Team Brit hand controls are great: they give you equal possibilities and allow me to compete against fully-able competitors. I don’t want to compete in sports where it would just be disabled against disabled, like wheelchair basketball. I want to compete against fully-abled.”
Eight years after he last raced a car, and on his front-wheel-drive debut, Bloch improved his pace at Silverstone to within a second of the other Gen 1 Cup cars before an electrical/ECU problem intervened in the second race.
“It was great to be on track,” he enthuses. “Nice to be surrounded by the other racers in pretty similar cars just to gauge where they’re at compared to where I’m at. I have to find a second in order to compete with the other Gen 1 cars, basically. I tend to build up my weekend slowly, but unfortunately I could not do that.”
Track time is now the priority, with this season’s final two events and as much testing as possible gearing Bloch up for a full campaign in 2025.
“It feels natural, it feels good,” he concludes. “We just need a bit more time with the car and then we should be up there. Hopefully I will be fast enough to play with the Gen 2 cars too.”
