dbRacing - Brands Hatch Race Report May 5th 2002

Brands Hatch Race Report, May 5th 2002

Practice

Testing had taken place on the Saturday and almost all of the front runners had been in attendance. Tony Brown seemed to have done a Schumacher. He had been out in the morning sessions and posted a quick lap time in the low 55 seconds and then sat back for the rest of the day while the rest of us did our afternoon testingy session. The really good news for me was that all the work Dave Sunderland of Strasse had done checking and rewiring the ignition system on the car the previous week had been worth it. The misfire had gone and I was able to spend time concentrating on getting the lap time down by improving each corner in turn.

Graham Burke had decided to be the first on track for the official practice. The rest of the front runners were behind him and I took to the track 7th in line. I immediately was on the pace of the previous day and for much of the session was in 3rd place. Traffic then came into play and for about 5 laps I could not get a good time due to the cars I had to overtake. Eventually I created some space and on my last lap went from 8th to 4th on the grid with a time of 55.6 seconds, ahead of the Donington winner Paul Tilleard and behind Brown, Carman and Burke. A second row grid position should be a good place to challenge for the higher places, I thought.

Race

The Brands Hatch Indy circuit is not my favourite as it is a very short lap with lots of twists and few passing opportunities. It is therefore important to get a good start. The lights changed and the clutch was released. I had been planning to try to get level with Rod Carman on the row ahead of me but my strategy went very badly wrong. As I did my best to get a good start the cars of White, Clapham, Broster and Harrison streaked past me as we entered Paddock Hill Bend. Other cars had also gone by on the inside and I was demoted from 4th to at least 12th within the first 100 yards of the race. This was going to make life difficult ! At the end of the first lap I was still in 12th place as the class 2 cars in front battled for position. I then began to pick the cars off, first it was Broster, who I believe had a gear selection problem. Next was Richard Harrison. His 2.4E is very fast in a straight line and on the 4th lap I passed him on the Paddock Hill Bend pulled out 10 yards and took the normal line round Druids. Richard decided that he could outbrake me into Druids and promptly spun in a cloud of tyre smoke. Unbelievably he ended up facing in the right direction and lost only a couple of seconds. For the next couple of laps I pursued and overtook the cars of Rothwell and Smyth and set about capturing 7th place from Patrick Pearce. I was gaining on him at the rate of almost one second per lap, and as we crossed the start finish line on lap 9 I was less than 0.7 second behind him and just 2 seconds further down the road was Clapham and White battling for 5th. As we approached Paddock Hill Bend again the red flags were waving........

Roger Farson had apparently tried to outbrake the 944's of Scott and Gregory and carried more speed in to the bend than the laws of physics would dictate to be permissible and still negotiate the bend. The result was he went into the gravel and promptly rolled his car. The car was irretrievable and so with just over 50% of the race complete the positions were counted back to the previous lap and declared final. Roger was uninjured, but I was pretty annoyed as this was the second Brands Hatch Race that the endeavours of Roger at Paddock had brought to an early conclusion for me. When I was racing the 2.7 RS in 1999 he tried a similar manoeuvre on me and succeeded in removing my rear bumper and silencer. On that occasion I was black flagged due to the noise level emanating from my car. On this occasion I am pretty sure that I would have had time to pass the next 3 cars and Paul Tilleard would likely not have finished due to a slow puncture. That would have left me 4th in the race and second in the Championship. I am now really looking forward to Spa with it's rolling hills and rolling start.