Sunday 30 August 2015

Porsche prevail in Nürburgring heat

Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard took their maiden WEC win as Porsche took a 1-2 finish at the Nürburgring 6 Hours.

Confirming that their form at Le Mans was no flash in the pan, the two 919 Hybrids led away from the start, with polesitter Neel Jani building up a 40 second advantage over a struggling Bernhard, who was forced to pit early for a nose change. Marcel Fassler was briefly able to leapfrog into second place, but Webber, who took his first Grand Prix win at the Nürburgring in 2009, was more than equal to the task and with his damaged splitter fixed, was able to work his way past the Swiss at Turn 3.
Jani had the pace to win in the no. 18, but the day
belonged to his team-mates (Nick Dungan, Adrenal).
It was to prove crucial as second would soon translate to first when Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb were hit by a succession of stop-go penalties – the first five seconds, then thirty seconds and finally a minute – for exceeding their fuel consumption, relegating the 18 crew to the tail of the lead lap and behind both Audi R18 e-tron Quattros of Fassler/ Andre Lotterer/ Benoit Treluyer and Loic Duval/ Oliver Jarvis/ Lucas di Grassi.

But all was not lost, and on a day when Porsche enjoyed a clear edge over Audi, a stellar treble-stint from Jani clawed the no. 18 919 back to second in the final hour, although there was no chance of catching his joyous team-mates. Championship leader Lotterer allowed di Grassi through as Audi tried in vain to catch Lieb in the closing stages, but re-took the place with minutes to spare to consolidate the no. 7 crew’s record of finishing on the podium in every race so far this season, while Toyota were again off the pace, defending champions Anthony Davidson, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima finishing three laps down in fifth and a further lap ahead of Alex Wurz, Mike Conway and Stephane Sarrazin.

Despite the rear-wing falling off their CLM on the front straight, ByKolles pairing Pierre Kaffer and Simon Trummer took privateer honours for the first time this season, two laps ahead of the no. 13 Rebellion of Nick Heidfeld, Mathias Beche and Nicolas Prost, which suffered from electrical gremlins.
G-Drive couldn't compete with the pace of the KCMG (John Rourke, Adrenal).
In LMP2, Matt Howson and Richard Bradley extended their championship lead with a peerless run to victory over G-Drive. On his return to the KCMG line-up following his Le Mans heroics, Nick Tandy qualified the ORECA 05 on pole and built a commanding lead in the opening stint over the chasing Sam Bird/ Roman Rusinov/ Julien Canal and Pipo Derani/Gustavo Yacaman/ Ricardo Gonzalez, only for a sluggish pitstop to cost the Brit 17 seconds and the lead. However, the silver-rated Rusinov was unable to keep a charging Howson behind him and could only watch as Yacaman followed suit a few laps later.

The Colombian put Howson under severe pressure for several laps, but after the stops Gonzalez was no match for Bradley, who cleared off into the distance. That left the Ligiers to fight it out amongst themselves, and when Gonzalez was held up in traffic, Canal was on hand to pounce for second. Oli Webb, Pierre Ragues and Archie Hamilton were a creditable fourth in the SARD-Morand Morgan, while Signatech Alpine narrowly defeated the best of the ESM Ligiers in the battle for fifth. Two pitlane speeding penalties relegated the promising Strakka-Gibson to seventh at the finish.

Porsche’s dominance continued in the GTE-Pro class, as the 91 and 92 cars finished first and second. After Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander’s Ferrari ground to a halt just 15 minutes into the race, Michael Christiansen and Richard Leitz were untroubled out in front, but there was an element of controversy surrounding Fred Makowiecki and Patrick Pilet’s second place finish. Having served a drive-through penalty for a jump start, Makowiecki found himself glued to the back of James Calado’s Ferrari for several laps; so close in fact, that when the Full Course Yellow came out to retrieve the rear wing of the CLM, the unsighted Porsche driver clouted the rear of the Ferrari, fouling the rear bodywork against a tyre and causing a puncture.
Makowiecki and Pilet survived their altercation with the 71 Ferrari
to finish second (Nick Dungan, Adrenal).
When the inevitable penalty did eventually come, it was in the form of another drive-through, enabling Pilet to maintain position over the frustrated Calado and Davide Rigon. After a promising Le Mans, Aston Martin weren’t at the races at the Nürburgring and never looked likely to trouble the podium places, with the 95 Dane Train of Marco Sorensen, Nicki Thiim and Christoffer Nygaard heading the 99 and 97, which featured British GT star Jonny Adam in a Pro line-up for the first time.

There was at least some good news for Ferrari in GTE-Am, as the no. 72 SMP squad took their second consecutive victory. In the end, Andrea Bertolini, Viktor Shaytar and Aleksey Basov proved just too strong for the no. 98 Aston Martin of Pedro Lamy, Mathias Lauda and Paul Dalla Lana, while Emmanuele Collard, Rui Aguas and Francois Perrodo completed the podium in the no. 83 AF Corse Ferrari.

Sunday 23 August 2015

Beechdean capitalise on nightmare day for Ecurie Eccosse

The British GT title will go down to the wire at Donington Park next month after Andrew Howard and Jonny Adam scored maximum points in Race Two at Snetterton. In a race which was red-flagged ten minutes before the end as cars continually aquaplaned off the circuit, the Beechdean AMR duo ran faultlessly to capitalise on a nightmare day for chief rivals Ecurie Ecosse.

Alexander Sims and Marco Attard had qualified on pole in the dry on Saturday, but in the greasy conditions it was Adam who made the best start, driving around the outside of Sims at Riches before cutting across to the inside for the Montreal Hairpin.
Adam lead on lap one in greasy conditions, which got progressively worse (Jakob Ebrey).
Sims tried to carry more momentum around the outside, but missed his braking point and slithered wide onto the grass, dropping him into the pack. As Sims re-joined, Race One winner Rory Butcher, who had in turn been nudged by Ryan Ratcliffe, was left with nowhere to go, the side-to-side contact causing punctures for both the BMW and Aston Martin.

Sims and Attard would eventually cross the line tenth, but their commanding 34-point advantage over Beechdean has now been slashed to just two, while two laps adrift, Butcher and Liam Griffin will need a dramatic turnaround at Donington, some 20 points adrift with 37.5 still to play for.

“We’ve got a 20-second penalty that we’ve got to deal with, but wet or dry, we need to crack on and we have a simple target, we just have to beat the BMW,” said Howard. “I think I’d run out of traction-control settings to be honest, the conditions were absolutely unbelievable. I’ve driven here in very bad conditions, but I had never driven a GT car in these conditions. It was weird because it literally went in the last lap and a half and if they hadn’t red-flagged it then, I don’t think we would have made it back!”
Keen and Minshaw floated to second (Jakob Ebrey).
Amid the carnage, Phil Keen charged through from fifth on the grid to second, which team-mate Jon Minshaw would hold until the end, a truly remarkable result having spent much of Saturday rebuilding the front-end after brake failure sent Minshaw hard into the tyres in FP1.

As the conditions became increasingly intolerable, Mark Farmer spun out of third place and was passed by the charging Ginetta of Rick Parfitt Jr., but it was Farmer and Jon Barnes that got to stand on the rostrum on countback. Behind a delighted Parfitt and stand-in team-mate Ratcliffe, championship outsiders Lee Mowle and Joe Osborne took fifth in their Triple Eight BMW, which had run as high as second in the early stages, with Derek Johnston and Matt Bell’s TF Sport Aston Martin rounding out the top six.

In GT4, Fox Motorsport’s Jamie Stanley and Fulvio Mussi took their first win of the year, but fourth place was enough for Beechdean duo Jamie Chadwick and Ross Gunn to seal the crown by one point. Without a wet setup on his Lotus, polesitter Gavan Kershaw floundered in the early stages, allowing Brands Hatch winner Luke Davenport to build up a commanding 12-second lead over Stanley and an impressive James Nash.
Gunn and Chadwick celebrate their GT4 title (Jakob Ebrey).
After the stops, Mussi reeled in Davenport’s inexperienced team-mate David Pattison at a rate of seconds per lap to take a comfortable win, with Scandi pairing Alexander Schjerpen and Fredrik Blomstedt taking a second consecutive podium in the Century Motorsport Ginetta. Davenport and Pattison took third, but the biggest celebrations were reserved for Beechdean – once all the maths had been completed.

“That was a good race, we kept out of trouble which was the main aim,” said a delighted Gunn.

Howard was full of praise for his young charges, who followed in the footsteps of 2014 GT4 champions Ross Wylie and Jake Giddings by winning in their first season of GT racing.

“It’s amazing, absolutely amazing,” he gushed. “These guys came from such a long way behind, nobody really gave them a chance because of age and experience. You have to remember that neither of them had driven a GT car before this year, I’m absolutely thrilled. I think what you see here is two of the genuine talents of future GT racing. For us it’s exciting that we can provide this platform, so let’s see what we can do going on from here.”

Butcher and Griffin keep title hopes alive

Rory Butcher and Liam Griffin kept their title hopes alive with a second win of the season in Race One at Snetterton, as Aston Martins swept the top four.

The race looked like a foregone conclusion after ex-BTCC racer Griffin pulled off a superb move around the outside of pole-sitter Andrew Jarman at Coram in traffic, but the combination of a few laps stuck behind the Von Ryan McLaren of Andrew Watson – which was later hit with a three-second stop-go penalty for a too short pitstop – and a lightning fast in-lap by Ahmad al-Harthy meant Alex MacDowall was presented with a comfortable lead after the pitstops.

However, the championship returnee was powerless as the GT4 Academy Motorsport Aston Martin of Mike Hart drifted across his line at Murrays, which bent his steering and relegated the luckless pair to ninth at the flag, with Butcher and Griffin the chief beneficiaries.
Griffin and Butcher took their second win of the season at Snetterton (Jakob Ebrey)
“I always said we needed to win, so I’m delighted,” said Griffin. “To be fair to Andrew, he drove really well and we didn’t get much of a look in, but I knew that once the backmarkers came into play then we would have a chance. He just decided to tuck up inside and I’d had a little play with it in practice to see what the grip was like out there and so I thought ‘alright, let’s go for it.’

“We were surprised when we were behind the McLaren, which obviously held us up a bit, but unfortunately Alex got taken out by a GT4 which gifted us the lead. We would have liked Alex to stay there and maybe knick some points off the other guys behind and the McLaren as well, but we’re not discounting ourselves yet. At Donington last year, Attard didn’t finish the final race…”

Behind them, Jarman and Jody Fannin held on to take a mistake-free second, with TF Sport team-mates Matt Bell and Derek Johnston completing the podium in third, their second in a row, and all without the assistance of power-steering.

“I think it’s the form we’ve been threatening all year, we’ve had some bad luck and Derek has been taken out a couple of times, but when the luck starts to run your way and the team and the car is good then the results start to come,” said Bell. “It was always going to be a tall order with the five second penalty, but the team did a mega job in the pitstops and we came out ahead of where we came in, which was a cracking effort from TF Sport again. They’ve been great all year, persevered through the hard bit and now they’re starting to get a bit of a reward. A double podium is really what they’ve deserved.”
Derek Johnston sprays the champagne after a second consecutive podium finish (Jakob Ebrey)
Despite bettering his lap record from last year, Jonny Adam and Andrew Howard were unable to pass the TF Sport cars and finished fourth, with Lee Mowle and Joe Osborne the best BMW in fifth. Championship leaders Alexander Sims and Marco Attard battled through to finish sixth on the road after qualifying ninth and serving a 15-second penalty carried over from Brands Hatch, but were docked 30 seconds in lieu of a drive-through penalty for making contact with Mike Simpson’s Ginetta at Nelson, much to Sims’ frustration.  That relegated the Ecurie Ecosse to eighth, prompting Watson and Wylie to sixth and Jon Barnes and Mark Farmer to seventh, despite a lurid spin at Riches.

In GT4, Oz Yusuf and Gavan Kershaw took a lights-to-flag victory in the ISSY Racing Lotus to keep the pressure on Beechdean. The no. 77 crew will also start from pole in Race Two, but Yusuf was eager to avoid any complacency.

“You can never be too confident, you’re always nervous until the checkered flag because we know that luck can go against you like it did at Brands, so thankfully it all went to plan,” he said. “We just want to take it to Donington, it would be sad if the championship was wrapped up before he final round. We’ve just got to keep going and hopefully get the same result.”
Once again, the Lotus was the car to have at Snetterton (Jakob Ebrey).
Behind him, Academy Motorsport’s Will Moore and Dennis Strandberg prevailed in a close fight with fellow Swede Fredrik Blomstedt and Aleksander Schjerpen’s Century Motorsport Ginetta in a straight fight for second, but Blomstedt wasn’t too disappointed after coming through from seventh.

“It was very exciting and very tough, now I can’t feel my arms!” he laughed. “It was very, very hot in the car. When it’s hot like it was yesterday the car gets very slippy, which makes it much harder for everyone to drive. Today the conditions were quite good, so it’s much better. I think we started P7 in the last race also, a top three is possible, hopefully we can get second this time!”

Graham Johnson and Mike Robinson were fourth, ahead of championship leaders Jamie Chadwick and Ross Gunn, who reckoned that second was on the cards before a brief loss of power cost them 12 seconds. 

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Servia's New Post

Recognising when the time has come to hang up one’s helmet is a dilemma which every driver must face at some stage in their career, and one which is notoriously difficult to get right. 1996 World Champion Damon Hill infamously overstepped the mark, often retiring healthy machinery in his final season with Jordan in 1999, while Michael Schumacher was arguably pushed into quitting too soon, only to perform an ill-fated U-turn in 2010 after the sport had fundamentally changed.  

IndyCar veteran Oriol Servià admits that retirement is something he too has considered in recent times, but despite stepping out of his ride with Dragon Racing in Formula E, is still some way off. These days, the 41-year-old can be found in the Formula E paddock still in Dragon team-wear, but now with the very official-sounding title of Managing Director, a switch made at the behest of team owner Jay Penske himself.
Servia (right) with Loic Duval at the Battersea e-Prix (Own photo).
“Funnily enough, it’s not that much different because throughout my career, I’ve always loved dealing with the engineers,” says the Spaniard inside the Battersea Park E-Motion Club in June. “I studied mechanical engineering for seven years and although I never worked as one, I’ve always liked it and always saw an advantage by being able to communicate well with them. Now, my job description is basically to make sure the team is working in the way I would like them to work.

“I’m not saying my driving is done; I always said I would stop driving the day that either my team-mate was beating me regularly – even if it was just two tenths every weekend – or I just got tired of everything around driving, the off-seasons never having a ride and still pushing for it year after year. But that day hasn’t arrived yet and I still do a good job at the wheel, so I haven’t given up.”

Having been a part of numerous teams during his lengthy IndyCar career, from frontrunners Newman/Haas, with whom he took his only victory at Montreal in 2005, to Forsythe Racing, KV Racing, Rahal-Letterman, Dreyer & Reinbold and minnows Dale Coyne, Servià certainly knows the constituent parts of a successful race team, which gave him a useful headstart in his new role.

“All my career I was never able to do two consecutive years in the same team, which I hated because as with anything else, not just racing, any sport, any company, continuity is key to success. I always felt like I did a good job, but it was because of lack of sponsorship or the team would close down, or whatever, I was never able to repeat. That gave me the opportunity to jump around a lot, be in extremely good teams and not good teams.

"It’s not like you take notes, but you suffer through the good and the bad times and just end up learning by experience what works and what doesn’t. It’s not only about how much money you can spend on a team – obviously that makes a big difference – but it’s about how the team works, how the engineers work, how you analyse and go after knowledge. Although I was unlucky in my career because I would have achieved more success by staying in one place, it was probably a good thing for whatever comes next in my life that I got to sample so many organisations.”
Servia won his only Champ Car race at Montreal in 2005 (Eric Gilbert).
To date, Servià is part of an exclusive club of drivers to score points in every e-Prix he started, but unlike Justin Wilson (Moscow) and Oliver Turvey (Battersea), did so across multiple events. Servià describes the move upstairs after Buenos Aires as an “organic” change and whilst he admits it certainly wasn’t easy, concedes that it has helped the team move forward. With former Le Mans winner Loic Duval stepping in to partner Jerome d’Ambrosio, Dragon became the first and so far only team to get both cars onto the podium in Berlin – which d’Ambrosio won following Lucas di Grassi’s disqualification – and again in London, en-route to second in the team standings.

“It was tough to step out after I had just been on pole in the second race in Putrajaya, because it wasn’t like I was at the back of the grid and being uncompetitive. We knew the performance of the car was there, but at the third and fourth races both Jerome and I couldn’t put it together and as a team we kept making silly mistakes. It was nothing major, but it all adds up and meant we kept effectively eliminating ourselves when we had fast cars,” says Servià.

“Afterwards Jay said to me ‘listen, we need to step it up here, I want you to take control and manage the team a little better’, which was something that I was already doing a little bit, but you can’t devote all your time to it when you’re driving. It’s very interesting, I’m liking it so far.

“I see it as something that can open a new career for me – as a driver you always wonder what you are going to do next and you have to figure out something new. At least this is 100% related to what I’ve been doing for the last 25 years, it enables me to apply exactly what I’ve learned as a driver and on the commercial side as well, only now I’m not just selling myself, I’m selling the team.”
Servia was promoted to pole in Putrajaya after a penalty for Nico Prost (Formula E).
A personal friend of Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag, Servià has been a fully-paid up fan of Formula E since its inception, and played an important behind-the-scenes role in pitching the project to Penske.  He takes up the story:

“When I knew about the championship being formed, I offered myself to help get in touch with US teams and US drivers and as I was explaining what it was about I found myself becoming really excited about it, almost like it was my thing!” Servià laughs. “I saw the future in the concept, in trying to connect new generations with new technology and racing downtown. In IndyCar we always did a lot of street races and it was always a success because you’re basically bringing the race to the people. And with these types of cars being electric vehicles you have fewer impediments and more cities that want to support it because they want to jump on the green bandwagon, so I saw it as a win-win.

“I also like the fact that the championship decided to go with a set number of teams. They were only going to have ten franchises, so if you have new manufacturers who see the value in the championship and want to jump in, they cannot just start their own team; they have to buy into the existing franchises, which means for once there is value in owning a team. In IndyCar or NASCAR, the value is only the sponsor you have for that year, the next year it can all change.”

And the rest, as they say, was history.

“Jay Penske loved it, saw the concept as I did, so we decided to partner up to try and acquire a franchise,” Servià continues. “At that time there were a lot of interested parties, so we didn’t know if we were going to get one, but luckily we did. Originally I wasn’t going to drive because I was still pursuing a full-season ride in IndyCar, but that wasn’t happening so we went along to the first test to see what the car was all about and I liked it. It’s really fun to drive, it has a lot of rear weight distribution with the battery, it doesn’t have a lot of grip with the grooved tyres and the brakes are challenging to say the least! I was always as fast, or faster than whoever was driving the other car, so we decided to keep going and at the second race I was on pole!”
Servia qualified on the outside of the front row at Indy in 2011 (Eric Gilbert).
What does the future hold for Oriol Servià the racer? At mention of the Indianapolis 500, the fire still burns bright in his eyes. Eliminated this year by a mistimed move by Ed Carpenter into Turn One, Servià, is determined to be back on the grid for next year’s 100th Anniversary race and better his fourth place finish from 2012.

“In terms of pure pleasure, the Indy 500 compares to nothing else,” he says. “The speeds you go to, the fact that you are there for three weeks working on every little detail, and it all comes down to whether you can deliver or not on a one day event over 500 miles with seven or eight pitstops, where there a lot of decisions and a lot of things that have to go right is always very special.

“I always felt that Indy was a race which is designed for the way I race, because I usually take a bit of time to warm up and take more risks at the end, and that’s the perfect race for that. I’ve been working on it for so long, just to become better at it, so I will pursue it like nothing else. It’s still on the bucket list, that’s for sure!”

Sunday 2 August 2015

Attard and Sims defeat Triple Eight in Brands Hatch thriller

Sims strengthens grip on title 

“That was the race of the year, it was great to watch” was Alexander Sims’ assessment of his first win since Round Three at Rockingham. It wasn't hard to see why.

The British GT championship put on a terrific show in the August sunshine, with incident aplenty and close racing throughout, but the broadest grins were reserved for Attard and Sims - fresh from a podium finish in the Pro-Am class at the Spa 24 Hours last weekend - who stretched the pair's championship lead over Beechdean to a commanding 34 points.

“There were a few good, close overtakes but I think they were hard, but fair,” Sims said. “It was really good fun, especially with Joe [Osborne], he made it really hard for me but in the end he slipped on a bit of oil which I was able to capitalise on.”

The enthralling battle with Osborne was only part of the story. After starting fourth, Attard survived a glancing blow with TF Sport's Andrew Jarman at Clearways – from which the Aston Martin came off decidedly worse – before Sims set the fastest lap on his very first flying lap. Having worked his way past Rory Butcher’s Motorbase Aston, which would slip to sixth at the finish, Sims cruised up behind the Triple Eight BMW started by Lee Mowle, which had itself survived a scrape with Ross Wylie’s McLaren at Stirlings.
Attard/ Sims strengthened their title credentials by beating Triple Eight (Jakob Ebrey).
Osborne defended expertly on tyres well past their best, but a slight mistake at Graham Hill Bend handed Sims the inside line for Surtees; he didn’t need asking twice. Second was a good result in isolation for the Triple Eight squad, but seeing Ecurie Ecosse extend their championship lead was far from ideal.

“Sitting in the garage, it was almost like waiting for a baby to be born,” Mowle said. “At first I thought there was no chance, but as the race went on I started to think it might just be possible. We now need a bloody good Snetterton to be in with a chance!”

A trouble-free run saw the second TF Sport Aston Martin of Derek Johnston and Matt Bell collect their first podium of the season in third, just ahead of Andrew Howard and Jonny Adam, who did well to limit the damage caused by a 20 second time penalty carried over from Spa. Starting from pole, Howard ran strongly in the opening stint, but the intervention of the Safety Car meant Adam was playing a game of damage limitation. 

“I think the penalty of 20 seconds is hard for Brands because GT3 cars are quite hard to overtake round here, it’s such a short lap as well, but we maximised what we could,” said the Scot. “Andrew drove really well and it was close at the end, the BMWs were having a good scrap amongst themselves and given another 15 minutes I think it would have been an interesting finish.”
Simonsen and Lester avoided incident to take seventh (Jakob Ebrey).
After being turned around by Rick Parfitt Jr.’s Ginetta in the early stages, Gary Eastwood and Adam Carroll fought their way back to a strong fifth ahead of Butcher and Liam Griffin, while Benny Simonsen narrowly beat Phil Keen to the line for seventh on Rosso Verde and Hector Lester’s return to the championship. The RAM Racing Mercedes of Lewis Plato and Alistair MacKinnon took ninth, while four laps down, Wylie and Andrew Watson completed the top ten after a chastening day for the young Scotsman, who also tangled with David Jones’ Mercedes.

Davenport dominates GT4

Luke Davenport and David Pattison charged through the pack from ninth on the grid to take a maiden GT4 win for Tolman Motorsport. Having shown promise throughout the season, without reward, it all came together at Brands Hatch, where Davenport enjoyed success last season in the Ginetta GT4 Supercup.

“The race just went to plan really, we knew we had good pace as we have done all season, it was just a case of converting it,” he said. “We knew that the strengths of the car would be around the back of the circuit in the high-speed stuff, we were just killing the Astons there, nobody was really defending too hard. I came out in sixth, we just picked them off one-by-one and controlled the race from there.
Davenport and Pattison enjoyed their day in the sun (Jakob Ebrey).
“I’ve always looked up to British GT; I did the Ginetta Challenge back in 2012 and 2013, went over to the TOCA package to do the Supercup last year and that was like serving my apprenticeship, so to come over here and get my first win is a great feeling. This car is the best Ginetta I’ve driven, the team make a rapid car which is really easy on its tyres as well, so all credit to them. They’ve never done endurance racing, they’ve never worked on cars at this level, so it’s a massive thing for them. We’ll build on this, we won’t get too big for our boots.”

Graham Johnson and Mike Robinson made it a Ginetta 1-2 in the Optimum Motorsport car, while championship leaders Jamie Chadwick and Ross Gunn completed the podium, despite being laden with ballast which destroyed the tyres towards the end of their stints. The Beechdean drivers were never truly in the running, but were the chief beneficiaries of a clash between Jake Hill and Dennis Strandberg at Druids which forced the Porsche man to retire on the spot.

“From my view there was clearly a gap on the inside and I had started to creep alongside into the braking area,” said Hill, “but he turned in on me, put me on the grass and broke my steering arm there and then. It was such a shame, we should have had third place which would have been our second podium in a row, but that’s how racing goes sometimes.”
The fans at Paddock Hill Bend enjoyed a thrilling race (Jakob Ebrey).
The pole-sitting Fox Motorsport Ginetta of Paul McNeilly and Jamie Stanley was also out of luck, with two separate incidents knocking them out of contention and leaving an irate Stanley to remonstrate with the officials.

“If you look back over the year, we’ve been on the podium with ten minutes to go three times and we’ve been really unlucky, this weekend was just more of the same,” he said. “Driving standards need to improve, but the championship needs to take a serious look at how it applies its regulations to make sure it’s done consistently. At Rockingham, Adam Carroll was disqualified for taking a car out of the race, and the decision was that if you end someone else’s race, then your race will be over as well. But we’ve had two people end our race and they’ve been there at the end. It’s very disappointing.”