GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT
For two-time BMW Compact Cup champion Steve Roberts, a first win in the Mazda MX-5 Supercup was a long time coming.
It’s been something of a slog since he made his debut in the championship last year, but Saturday’s win from pole position at Castle Combe proved to the category frontrunners that he’s now a driver to be reckoned with.
After using his student loan to buy a Van Diemen RF85 at the start of his career, Roberts won the 2004 North-west Formula Ford 1600 Championship in an RF92 before graduating to the British championship. The new era of Duratec Formula Ford yielded podium finishes in
’06 against a field with the calibre of Peter Dempsey, Nick Tandy, James Nash and Nathan Freke. But then the money ran out.
“Well, I didn’t have the money to start with, so I got into debt,” says Roberts. “I jacked it in, moved down to London and concentrated on my career. I had a break until 2012, and that’s when
I came back to do Compacts.”
The switch to racing for fun in tin-tops brought titles in 2013 and ’15, and Roberts decided to quit while he was ahead after beating British GT champion James Gornall and Mike Tovey to his second crown.
Looking for a new challenge and having considered the BMW 330 Challenge and M3 Cup, Roberts was recommended the MX-5 Supercup by Mazda specialist Brian Chandler. He picked up a second-hand car and qualified fourth first time out at Brands Hatch last year. But the results weren’t forthcoming.
A podium eventually came at round five at Snetterton, but by then Roberts had decided to sit out the rest of the season, saving budget for a renewed assault in 2018.
“I really struggled for consistency more than anything,” Roberts admits. “I got caught up in a few incidents, and the car was actually a bit of a banana anyway, so that was it – I just said to [team owner] Rob [Boston], ‘Just build me a new car.’”
Hopes were high for the new season, and Roberts finished second to team-mate Will Stacey in the Silverstone opener, but the car seemed to lack straightline speed. When he qualified seventh at Brands, while only 24th fastest out of 29 through the speed trap, Roberts and Boston knew something was wrong. They invested in a new engine, and suddenly the outright pace was there.
Last time out at Rockingham, issues including a damaged airbox meant Roberts couldn’t show the car’s true potential, and some fluffed gearchanges restricted him to second from the reversed-grid pole.
It came good in qualifying at Castle Combe as Roberts took pole by a quarter of a second, only for contact with James Blake-baldwin to shuffle him down to eighth on lap one of the opener. From there, he mounted a stirring comeback. Third by lap four, he passed Luke Herbert for second at Avon Rise a couple of laps later, then made a move stick on Blake-baldwin at the Esses on the penultimate lap.
“Being the hunter throughout the race is actually enjoyable because at no point was I in that nervous, tentative state of trying to protect the lead,” says Roberts. “That mid-section of the chicanes is where I gain all my time.”
But in the second attempt Roberts came crashing back to earth. He finished in the barriers at Tower after contact with Blake-baldwin, whose championship hopes were dented after being excluded from the win as a result.