DRAMA IN THE NIGHT AS BRIT CAR END SON A HIGH
Simon Rudd and Tom Barley guided their Ginetta G55 to a one-lap win in the two-hour ‘Into the Night’ Britcar finale at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit last Sunday, beating the SEAT Coupa of Ashley Woodman and Martin Byford.
Rudd and Barley took charge after Sprint competitors finished their involvement, with slightly less than half of the Enduro completed. Sam Randon, sharing a Toyota Avensis with aspiring touring car driver Michael Crees, suffered the embarrassment of beaching the car on his way to the grid.
After starting from the pits he made it into the lead before making way for Crees.
The former British Touring Car lacked a rapid refuelling system and dropped well back, but during his recovery Crees had a drive-through penalty for a pitstop offence and stopped again to have a dragging front splitter attended to.
A third place finish rewarded the Team Hard crew, who had a 0300hrs session to replace a broken gearbox.
Matt le Breton had the distinction of finishing both fourth and fifth, sharing the driving duties in an Audi RS3 TCR a Mclaren GT4.
In Saturday’s 50-minute race the lead changed with a lap to go as the top three finished within four seconds. Winners were David Brise and Alan Purbrick, giving their Saker RAPX its best result when Purbrick passed the David Mason and Ross Wylie Ferrari 458 on the final tour.
A Ginetta G55, started by Lucky Khera and finished by Declan Jones, lapped faster than both in third place but fell just short of victory.
Mason and Wylie gained from a caution period to beat the Saker in the sprint half of Sunday’s race, even though Mason lost much of his advantage with two gravel trap visits. Khera and Jones were third again.
The Ginetta G50 of Sarah Moore and Matt Greenwood secured the Britcar Endurance Championship, and Sprint title winners were Jon Watt and Kristian Prosser in their BMW M3.
The aptly named Wayne Rockett shot into the lead of the first Hyundai Coupe race, hanging on under pressure from Steve Kite, who made a mistake on the first lap. Rockett’s getaway was more of a damp squib in race two. Although he took the lead when Kite missed a gear, Kite eventually flew back in front.
Nobody else was in the hunt for victory, but exciting battles were fought down the order.
The South Eastern Tin Tops championship was decided in Ford Fiesta driver Rikki Taylor’s favour when main points rival Alfie Brooker had his Vauxhall Astra blow up at the beginning of race two.
Brooker had kept his title chances alive by winning race one overall with Taylor top of his class. Kamran Tunio’s Honda Civic took race two in near darkness after delays caused by Ginetta Junior mayhem, but only after contact with Dave Charlton’s SEAT Leon which broke a driveshaft on the Spanish car.
Steve Burrows (Peugeot 206cc) scored his first Intermarque win of the year on Sunday after a series of podium finishes, but it wasn’t enough to beat Lewis Smith (Vauxhall Tigra) to the championship. Smith finished second to Chris Brockhurst (Tigra) in race one with Burrows third. Taking a cautious approach to avoid trouble from ninth on a part-reversed grid, Smith reached third in race two.
TIME
1h46m22.108s +1.208s +2.505s +3.521s +4.542s +6.406s +8.340s +9.597s +11.840s +12.793s
Tarquinisurvivescrashdramatotakewtcr
In the first year of World Touring Cars’ new WTCR era, it was two of the all-time greats of tin-top racing that duked it out for the inaugural title in Macau.
Seven drivers headed to the season finale with a mathematical chance of claiming the World Touring Car Cup, but realistically it boiled down to a straight head-to-head between Gabriele Tarquini and Yvan Muller.
Tarquini, with a 39-point advantage and 87 left on the table heading into the weekend, should have sealed things comfortably – but this was Macau. A seventh-place berth on the grid for the opening race was solid – Muller was four places up the road – but second qualifying was less successful. A biff with the barriers at Lisboa on his final Q1 run ended his session, resigning him to 14th for the final two races. Muller would start from fifth then sixth.
The Italian was still in a decent position after race one – Muller finished second, two places ahead, to reduce his arrears by six points – but then left the door open for his rival heading into the finale when he was an innocent victim in a lapone crash in race two, which felt inevitable given his midfield start.
That put Tarquini’s BRC team in a race against time to repair his Hyundai for the final race – one they won – but he still faced a sweat. Eventually, though, 10th place, plus Muller finishing fourth, was enough to hand the veteran a second world title at the age of 56.
Rob Huff, a nine-time winner in Macau, scored both qualifying pole positions yet failed to win any of the weekend’s three races.
Despite prodigious pace in the mountain section, Huff forfeited the lead off both his pole position starts and, without sufficient grunt in his Volkswagen Golf GTI on the long run off the final corner down to Lisboa, had to settle for a third and a second. The races were instead won by Jean-karl Vernay, Frederic Vervisch and Honda racer Esteban Guerrieri. ● Oliver Jarvis did not enjoy a successful return to Macau. Making his first start since winning the Grand Prix in 2007, Jarvis finished 12th of the 14 finishers in a depleted FIA GT World Cup field in his KCMGrun Nissan GT-R NISMO. The race was won by BMW driver Augusto Farfus in Charly Lamm’s final race as Schnitzer team boss.