Browning: Losing appeal doesn’t affect title bid
Ginetta Junior frontrunner Luke Browning says that failing to win a National Court appeal against his exclusion from the win at Oulton Park has not affected his championship position.
Browning finished first on the road in the opening Oulton race, but was disqualified from the results after officials were unable to extract enough oil from the differential in parc ferme.
The team appealed, claiming that a mechanical failure had caused oil to leak, but was told after the Snetterton round that its appeal was unsuccessful.
However Browning feels that if he had not been penalised at Oulton he would’ve had a mechanical failure in the second Oulton race – that he went on to win.
“The way we look at it, the next race [where he won] we would have got a DNF anyway so it would have evened itself out,” said Browning, who was 36 points down on Adam Smalley heading into the Rockingham weekend.
“It’s just one of those things, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was a Ginetta part and it’s not the team’s job for that to work.”
Team boss Gwyn Richardson added: “He will still be fighting for the championship, the gap isn’t that big – it’s just a DNF in one race.”
Following the Rockingham weekend, which featured Browning recovering from a tough first race to take a second and a win while Smalley took two thirds and a fourth, the points gap is now 45.