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Britcar Silverstone race report - March 26th 2005

I spent a good deal of my childhood just down the road from Snetterton in a small village called East Harling so returning to the East Anglian track always brings back happy memories of cycling to the circuit, getting in for free and watching all manner of motor sport - cars, bikes, dragsters, even airplanes once !   I hope Jonathan Palmer`s Motor Sport Vision, the new owners of Snetterton, continue to let young lads on their bikes get in for free to watch the racing - you never know they might grow up to race on the other side of the fence one day !

This was always going to be a hard weekend with a 90 minute race on the Saturday and a 5 hour endurance race on Sunday. We tested Friday and tweaked suspension settings slightly to fine tune the car though in fairness Steve, Warren, Hamish and Dave from Jaz, the guys that look after the car,  had once again delivered a car that handled beautifully straight out of the box. We drivers get all the glory but without a decent set of wheels to pedal we do look a bit silly and given the length of Sunday`s race especially, a badly prepared car would make driving the distance very hard, both on tyres and driver. For some reason we had been moved up to class one from class two in the programme, we weren`t sure quite why although there had been some rumblings of a re-shuffle at Brands Hatch the previous meeting.

Partnering me this weekend was Mark Sumpter, a  fine driver and equally modest, the former British GT champion, FIA, Porsche cup and Daytona 24 hour veteran is an easy going chap and gelled with the team. We swapped ideas and the pairing definitely brought out the best in everyone. I consistently lapped the circuit faster on hour old Dunlop endurance tyres and with 90 litres of fuel on board than I had previously managed on new Michelin sprint rubber and with half the fuel load.

I started Saturday`s race and we had qualified 7th. Just as I sat on the grid waiting for the safety car to lead us round on our formation lap prior to the rolling start the rain began to fall. Off we set the track getting wetter and wetter, coming out of the Esses at 30 mph the back of the car gently slipped away from me and I span on the track, all the cars filed past and I had to wait until the back of the train to get started again. Bloody brilliant, six and a half hours of racing ahead over two days the track was an ice rink we were pretty much in last place what the hell was happening. Because of the rain the safety car did another lap I pottered round until I could dive into the pits for wet tyres. The lads swapped me over in the blink of an eye and now we were cooking. I love my GT3 in the rain and set to work redeeming myself. 

An early course yellow to recover a BMW from the armco at Riches proved a bit of a nuisance especially as I was caught up in a train of cars behind a slowcoach who couldn`t keep up with the safety car and we lost half a lap as a result ! Eventually the incident was cleared up and we set off on our merry way. Other than a gentle tap up my arse from a Marcos trying to get past at Corum things were fairly routine.  As the track dried I had to stay out on the wet tyres until it was deemed dry enough to send Mark out on dry tyres. In the end I handed the car over to Mark in 7th place, we`d managed to climb back up the order and things were looking good. We elected to run Mark on intermediate tyres rather than full slicks this was a bit of a gamble, the conditions favoured slicks but we had an inkling the rain might not have made it`s last appearance of the day. Mark drove well and sure enough with 10 minutes to go the heavens opened. Our intermediate tyres just about coped although in fairness wets would have been the better option. Anyway it wasn`t worth the time penalty to swap and we finished in 5th place overall, 4th (so we thought), in class finishing ahead of Callum Lockie in the Ferrari, Adam Sharpe in the Ford Falcon and the Cole brothers in their Ferrari 360. A good days work. A quick shuffle in the dancing competition, half of shandy then off to bed to rest up for the big day. 

Sunday dawned and the sun had got his hat on. We were up at the crack of dawn ready to qualify only to be told that we needn`t have bothered as the starting grid was being formed up based on finishing positions from the previous day. No matter, a couple of free practice laps before breakfast were just what the doctor ordered !   5 hours is a long time to go racing. If you`re thinking, "that`s nothing, I drove Inverness to Penzance non stop last week and it took me 10 hours." well think again. That`s 5 hours racing against 20 other cars at 150mph, braking hard, clipping the apex markers then drifting out to meet the exit kerbs without overstepping the mark and flying off into the steel barrier, catching the odd wayward back end, missing the odd spinning car not worrying too much when your GT3 slides out a couple of feet on some one`s oil. Oh and can you try and lap consistently to within half a second or so each time !  You do need to eat a few pies to build up the energy levels.

Mark was starting this time and the weather was perfect, bloody typical, if I`d been in there would probably have been hail-stones or a small tornado. We had worked out a rough game plan for when to call fuel, driver and tyre stops though in reality this can alter if a safety car is called into play. In the event things went well and after the first hour we were in 4th place, 2nd in class. Then towards the end of Mark`s stint the car started losing power. We had blown out a lambda sensor, of all the things you can plan for this is not one of them and so there was no alternative but to stick the car in the air and effect a temporary repair. In all we lost around 15 minutes or 12 laps. Off I went fingers crossed. Initially I was concerned the repair would give up but things seemed ok so I pushed on. At the 2nd hour mark our problems had meant we were down to 12th place. Then the car started losing power again. The Scott / Greensall Mini, (all be it BMW V8 powered !), was pulling past on the straights, in fact everything was pulling past on the straights. I came in to hand over to Mark again and to be honest I thought we`d run our race and was ready to pull the plug until I saw Mark`s lap times. Everything seemed fine again, nothing was said but the crew obviously thought I was just knackered and couldn`t drive - but there had been a problem, honest guv`nor. By the 3rd hour we were in 10th overall. Then 40 minutes into his stint Mark came on the radio to say he was losing power, thank god for that, I wasn`t mad. 

We were getting ready to pull the car in when Mark radioed through to say he`d fixed the car by turning the electrics of and back on. 10 minutes later the same thing and so on until we pulled him in for a driver change and re-fuel. I got in the car set off out of the pits and all was fine, the mystery fault was in hiding again. With 4 hours gone we were now in 8th place overall, 5th in class (we thought). For the rest of my stint things went fairly routinely. I had a BMW spin in front of me at Russell and at one stage managed to take David Leslie`s BMW round the outside at Corum, all right so the car was in the near room to death and heading for the pits but it makes for a good story !  Settling down for the last 20 minutes when bugger me it started pissing down again. Initially I was quite brave and kept my foot in until a big slide at Riches told me the slicks had finally met their match with the water. Luckily I managed to hold on and didn`t spin but others weren`t so lucky and quite a few cars slipped off the tarmac. I did wonder if we would see the race finish behind the safety car, it was a strange situation, the top half of the circuit - Riches and Sear were drenched, the bottom half - Corum and the Bombhole not so. Given our ability to change wheels very quickly I took the rather unusual step of switching to wets. Ultimately it wasn`t the quickest tyre particularly on the bottom part of the track but it was, with 10 or 15 minutes to go ultimately the safest option and we didn`t have anyone breathing too heavily down our necks. Riches stayed damp for the rest of the race although the rest of the track dried. 

At nineteen minutes past five we crossed the line in 7th place, 5th in class. We had successfully completed 5 hours of racing in the Britcar 300. Speaking with the race organisers after the event it transpires we should not have been put in class 1 after all, it was a clerical error and so whilst we sadly won`t get to enjoy the tin wear on our mantelpieces, the error being discovered after the event, we did in fact come 2nd in class for both races a great result. 

If is a huge word in motorsport but if only the lambda sensor hadn`t broken out of the exhaust we may have taken 4th place overall. Still that`s endurance motor racing. Our disappointment was at least softened by the fact that our problems occurred early on in the race before hopes were raised too high. Marcos rivals Mercer, Fores and Pallard in their number 43 Mantis were leading overall until a wheel bearing failed with just 19 laps to go, they will definitely be men on a mission come Brands Hatch in June. 

Finally thanks to Wilden Services. Without their support we wouldn’t` have had any wheels on our wagon ! 

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