Eventful races to finish Tilley’s GT Cup season
LEICESTER DRIVER BATTLES TRICKY CONDITIONS AT SNETTERTON
GRAHAME Tilley had an eventful weekend as the GT Cup Championship reached its season finale at Snetterton, in Norfolk, writes Peter Scherer.
The Triple M team had been working flat out just to get the Leicester driver’s Nissan NISMO GTR GT3 ready for Snetterton following its accident at Donington Park last time out.
After the morning qualifying session, Tilley was eighth overall and sixth in class.
“It was very greasy and extremely difficult conditions to drive in, so I just did the best I could,” he said.
It was damp for the first race too, with Tilley in eighth on the opening lap.
“My lap times weren’t too bad, but the opposition on this circuit are a league above us,” he said.
“I hadn’t got the traction of the newer cars, so it was hard to stay with them, never mind trying to close.”
Tilley – who will celebrate his 70th birthday on October 9 – remained in eighth for the entire race, which gave him sixth in class, after a fairly solitary 25 minutes.
For the second race and the first Endurance one of the weekend, he was teamed with Sennan Fielding again.
But the race started wet and just got wetter.
With one car off on the first lap, out came the safety car, with Tilley in 16th place.
“There was standing water on the right hand side of the track and at the start I couldn’t even see the first corner, so lost places there and more at the hairpin due to lack of traction,” he said.
The safety car came out again due to the conditions and all the frontrunners made their stops under caution, with Tilley handing over to Fielding.
“I think I had about four laps and then it was red flagged. I didn’t think it was enough to stop the race though,” said Fielding, after finishing eighth overall and fifth in class.
Fortunately, it was dry for Sunday’s qualifying and Tilley was fifth overall and fourth in the class. Having lost out at the start again, his hopes of early progress were dashed as the safety car came out for a couple of laps.
From the green flag, he began to make inroads on Laurent De Meeus’ seventh-placed Ferrari.
“I caught him in the wrong places, as I was still struggling to get out of the slower corners with less traction, especially onto the Bentley Straight,” said Tilley.
The gap continued to open and close over the remaining laps, but he had to accept eighth overall and sixth in class at the flag, still over a second off his rival.
It was a better start in the final race of the weekend, with Tilley in sixth by the end of lap three.
The Ferrari of De Meeus that he had pursued in the earlier race was now chasing him.
“I decided to try and build a bigger gap over him and tried to speed up as I could see the Jennings Porsche ahead,” he said.
“But I overshot at the end of the Bentley Straight and he got by.”
Pitting from seventh to hand to Fielding, he managed to get ahead of the Ferrari again in the pit lane.
When fifth-placed Caton’s Porsche was caught out by some backmarkers, Fielding improved his position and retained it to the flag to finish fourth in class.
“The car was still hard to drive, fun but a bit of a handful,” said Fielding.
Father and son pairing Richard and Sam Neary claimed a maiden GT Cup Championship title victory for Team Abba Racing, seeing off the threat of Topcats Racing in Norfolk.