Britcar, Brands Hatch GP June 2005
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RACE 1 : Britcar at Brands Hatch, 25th June 2005Classic Little 'Un Versus Big 'UnThe Saturday 100 minuter at Brands Hatch was the better Britcar race of the combined Britcar / Belcar weekend, although as Steve Wood reports next, Sunday’s race had its incidents and good racing too. Saturday morning’s qualifying session was disrupted by the
oil deposited by the blown engine of the #23 Team Parker Racing
Porsche. The slick began at Clearways and continued to Graham Hill
Bend, and the safe option was not to continue qualifying on the
treacherous surface. The grid therefore had some anomalies in the order, although the
top five all put in quick times early on. They were Mark Cole in
the ASM Ford Falcon, Barry Horne in the Parr Porsche, Calum Lockie
in Bo McCormick’s well run-in Ferrari, Mike Youles in Paul
Phillips’ new acquisition, the jet black, 2002 Sunniva Porsche
RS and the Mick Mercer / Richard Fores Marcos. Mark Cole set the pattern from the start, as he would on Sunday,
flying off into the middle distance in the Falcon: he was 7.6 seconds
ahead at the end of lap 1. It turned out that the opposition was
typically using its slower drivers in the first stint, so the chasing
group was suddenly in the order Eugene O’Brien (the fast man
up from sixth on the grid), Mick Mercer’s Marcos, the Noble
(which would only last three laps), McCormick in his 360, Handkammer
in the #1 BMW, Greensall in the Mini, the Brown / White BMW –
and only then the two Porsches from the front of the grid (Cameron
and Phillips). Colin Simpson was a man on the move, in the #12 Marcos he shares
with Jeff Wyatt, up from eleventh on lap 1 to fourth on lap 4 –
by which time the Falcon was 19 seconds ahead of Mercer in the best-placed
#43 Mantis. Lap 8 and the Falcon was in traffic, and starting lap 9, Paul Phillips
had a big spin at the foot of Paddock: it turned out that the newly-acquired
911 was a real handful at the bottom of the hill… as Mike Youles
would find out – twice.
Lap 16 and Mark Cole’s lead was 29.9 seconds – and we’d
almost lost the Mini. Nigel Greensall: “I lost all power on
the back straight, but managed to coast all the way to the rise
before Clearways, just about got over that, and picked up speed
down to the pits.” A relay had popped out, and that was soon
fixed, but Sunday’s race was much the more satisfactory one
for the Beechdean entry. A light drizzle made the climax even more interesting, the SC bunching them up to a gap of only five seconds. It shrank to 4.4, then out to 5.5 – and suddenly, Mike Youles was spinning at the foot of Paddock. “This was the first time out in the car, and it was set up far too soft,” said Youles, later. “At the bottom of Paddock, it went solid at the back every lap. I wasn’t trying too hard as some people suggested – it just became uncontrollable when it went solid.” A 1:42 lap for the black car meant it was the Falcon with a five
second margin, and that was it, 100 minutes up. “I would have caught him anyway,” said the winner. “It
was raining quite hard round the back, and with the oil down, it
was quite slippery. We had compressed air trouble at the pit stop:
Mark (Cole) had used up the front tyres, and I had to have some
fresh ones.” Result RACE 2: Britcar at Brands Hatch, 26th June 2005Falcon CrestsAnother dominant performance saw Adam Sharpe and series debutant
Mark Cole take a trouble-free win in Sunday’s 100-minute race,
only losing the lead when they pitted for their driver change and
refuelling.
With the grid for Sunday’s race being determined by the previous day’s result, it was the Falcon on pole, with Paul Phillips' smart, new, black Porsche 996 alongside. The Hargreaves Ferrari 360 of Bo McCormick and Calum Lockie was missing from its third slot on the grid, since both car and drivers had finished the Belcar race only minutes earlier, achieving a class podium, and needed some recovery time. They would eventually join from the pit lane seven laps in. For various reasons, four more cars were missing – Andy Allen had left the circuit on Saturday evening to attend his “surprise” 40th birthday party, and the Symons/D’Cruze BMW had been re-aligned into the Production S1 category overnight. Mechanical problems had forced the retirement of the Edwards/Jenkins and Simpson/Wyatt Marcos, leaving the peripatetic Jeffrey Wyatt to hawk his services around the paddock, finding employment in the Topcats TVR Tuscan, in which David Upton (eighth on Saturday) had elected to miss the Sunday race. Come the start, it was Cole in the Falcon who blasted into the
lead, and by the end of lap three, was nearly 10 seconds ahead of
David Leslie’s BMW M3. Leslie, though, had his mirrors full
of Peter Seldon’s stunning new BMW GTR, impressing mightily
on its debut weekend. Behind them, Phillips, in the Porsche, held
a lonely fourth, and, as novice Bill Cameron’s Porsche slipped
back, it was the Topcats Marcos pair once more carving through the
field together, Mick Mercer’s silver machine in the vanguard,
Rupert Bullock’s blue car acting as tail gunner. Also impressive was the Butler Motorsports BMW of Tony Brown, one of several maxxed-up M3s appearing for the first time this season, up to ninth from the penultimate row of the grid. Brown was pulling Ed Moore’s BMW along with him, the red and black GTR-lookalike still sporting its original CSL road engine, and with a prop shaft borrowed from a Belcar team. Alastair McKinnon was an early pit visitor, to retire
the Noble, the works team’s wretched luck continuing, and Mike
Gardiner wouldn’t be repeating the previous day’s class
victory, the scrutineers calling the BMW in to investigate the source
of some smoke, and retiring the car. Phillips brought the Porsche in for MikeYoules to take over while there was still 75 minutes to run, ironically just before the safety car was deployed to recover Brown’s yellow BMW, which was stuck in the gravel at Hawthorns, ending a promising weekend. Taking their mandatory stops at this point, though early, with
under a third of the race run, were Mercer’s Marcos (to Richard
Fores), Seldon’s BMW (Eugene O’Brien - below), Cameron
(to Barry Horne), McCormick (to Lockie), and Wyatt’s TVR. Aaron
Scott also brought in the SuperMini to hand to Nigel Greensall,
the car now going well after its electrical glitch the day before. Cole’s lead, up to nearly half a minute prior to the caution,
was now down to just three seconds when the field was unleashed
five laps later, and an hour left on the clock. His attempts to
regain the comfort zone were thwarted, however, by another safety
car call just three laps later, Richard Fores’ Topcats Marcos
having landed in the gravel at Stirlings. The time was right, now
being half-distance, for the serious pit-stoppers, and all except
Ed Moore’s #32 impressionist GTR dived in. Seven laps under the yellow this time, and whilst Moore was first on the road, the “real” lead was held by Eugene O’Brien’s BMW GTR, but once the field went green again, his considerable skill was no match for the raw Aussie power of Sharpe’s Falcon, and, despite a valiant attempt, was powerless to fend off the inevitable. Marcus Fothergill, in another of the “Southend cruise night”
M3s, was alleged to have contravened the refuelling procedure, and
brought in for a stop-go, but the real drama was at the front of
the field, where an increasingly smoky Moore was rapidly overhauled
by Sharpe for the lead, before being called in by the officials,
to retire the car. “We’ve had our problems this weekend,”
said Simpson Motorsport boss Anthony Mott, “but we’ve
shown how fast we can run”.
The raging Horne rapidly dispensed with Handkammer and O’Brien on consecutive laps, and began chipping away at Sharpe’s 22-second lead. British GT refugee Pete Morris, “we ate all the pies” proudly emblazoned on the back of the Henry Firman-owned Porsche GT3, had hauled the car back up the order, and was worrying the remaining Topcats Marcos, Jon Harrison needing to call on all of his self-taught skills honed on the short circuits. The Handkammer/O’Brien feud had atypically got out of hand, however, and an incident out on the GP circuit left the white M3 in the gravel, and the blue GTR still running, but without its front bumper and splitter. This was enough for the officials to call time on the proceedings, and the red flags were shown, ending the race eight minutes early, and with 52 laps on the board. So, a jubilant Adam Sharpe Motorsport team took its second win of the weekend, Adam Sharpe extolling the virtues of the longer Brands Hatch configuration; “We struggled here on the Indy circuit earlier in the year, but the Grand Prix circuit is good for the Falcon, with its long straights and fast corners”. Mark Cole, after his recent traumas in the SEAT, could barely contain his delight; “I’ve had real fun – the car is so good, you just want to powerslide, but you know that would destroy the tyres.” Barry Horne’s stirring final stint brought the Henry Firman-owned
Porsche home second, and, despite the last-minute shenanigans, Eugene
O’Brien and Peter Seldon retained their third place, Eugene
giving his interpretation of the incident; “We exchanged paint
on more than one occasion during that lap, and then Harry went for
a gap that wasn’t quite as wide as his BMW”. Harry, no
doubt, saw things differently.
Class 2 honours were taken by the heavily-revised #82 Torquespeed
BMW M3 of Dave Bennett and Marcus Fothergill, all three of the “boy
racer” looking M3s serving notice of intent this weekend. This
is the #83 car of David Ellis and Mike Salmon. “We’ve got serious for this season,” explained Fothergill,
“and it’s not just the aerodynamic package – we’ve
uprated the brakes and suspension too." Heading Class 3 was the Supermini of Aaron Scott and Nigel Greensall, after a fine run. Despite occasional glitches, this bold project is now getting the results it deserves, a fitting tribute to the perseverance of Andrew Howard, John Cockburn, and the hard-working Beechdean team. Third in class was the second Torquespeed M3 of David Ellis and Mike Salmon. And Calum Lockie? It had been a hard weekend. He and Bo McCormick had performed in both Britcar races, and the Belcar race, and Calum had also co-driven Michael Wilson’s BMW in the two Production S1 races. That’s around five hours track time for Calum, and, despite his best efforts, the three safety car periods put paid to any semblance of an effective recovery, and the tired 360 finished with the same six-lap deficit that it started with. The series returns to Snetterton next, on July 16. Result
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