Motorsport Shanel shows her potential at Brands Hatch
SHANEL Drewe gained valuable experience racing for the Community Driving School team at Brands Hatch over the weekend.
Shanel, who is backed by Motul and Witham Motorsport, was faced by many difficult challenges, including a bonnet which flipped up, but showed she is getting to grips with the car.
Without the pre-race testing budget, Shanel turned up for Friday practice only to find the fantastic weather broken for heavy rain all day. With hot sunny weather forecast for Saturday, venturing out on the track on Friday would not have helped and only risked the car. So, Saturday qualification was the first time for Shanel in her Mini around Brands Hatch, and she had just 15 minutes to master the car. She qualified 31st out of 33 cars. But examining her video footage after qualification, the team found she was losing a lot of the time just by braking less than half-a-second sooner than she should into the last corner. They estimated this alone would have moved her to at least mid-grid, as only about two seconds split all 33 cars.
In an amazing start to race one, Shanel was on a charge and overtook five cars on the opening laps, and even making her way through all the traffic, was less than a second a lap slower than the leading pack, who had a clear track in front of them.
This race looked really promising until a car in front turned into her going into the Clearways Corner, sending themselves spinning, and Shanel into the gravel. Shanel managed to drive out of the gravel, but was a lap down and the other car was beached and caused a safety car.
On the safety car restart, Shanel found gravel in her brakes, so kept as far left as she could along the straight and into the fearsome Paddock Corner. Unfortunately, a driver not looking far enough forward thought they had an opportunity to try to overtake around the outside of Paddock, andupon realising too late there was no space, turned sharply in without looking and caused a multicar pile-up at the base of Paddock bend. This missed Shanel by millimetres, but the race was red flagged. After all the events, Shanel still managed to finish 31st out of 33 cars.
Race two, and a fantastic start by Shanel saw her overtake four cars on the first lap, but a separate incident with an overturned car red flagged the race and they reset the start after a long wait on the grid.
In the second start, Shanel again repeated her first-lap performance, but when entering the fearsome Paddock Bend at almost 100mph, her bonnet flipped up, smashing her windscreen and blocking her view. Despite the bonnet blocking her view, Shanel managed to avoid the cars around her, and still managed to maintain an average speed over 50 mph to get back to the pits for the team to push the bonnet down and resecure it.
Rejoining the race with a broken windscreen in her view line, Shanel still managed to finish 24th out of 33 starters.
All-in-all, it was a weekend of ‘what-ifs’ beset with challenges and knockbacks beyond Shanel’s control, but the team analysed her times, and noted she was vastly faster than her positions demonstrated, and most importantly, was showing some very consistent laps times, proving she is getting to grips with the car.