Harrison takes artful win after turbo issues
CROFT BARC
11-12 JULY
Danny Harrison bounced back from mechanical issues aboard his Praga R1T to take victory in the second of the
Britcar Endurance Championship’s two season-opening races at Croft.
After work to repair a cracked turbo forced him to start the first race two laps down, the VR Motorsport driver recovered in style with a dominant effort in the second encounter – Harrison lapped everyone bar team-mates Jack Fabby and Garry Townsend in the second-placed R1T and the Ross Wylie/paul Bailey Ferrari in third. His victory – by more than a minute – came despite having to run on reduced power to preserve the turbo, which was repaired rather than replaced due to a lack of spares.
“After not making the grid for race one, this was just a brilliant way to cap a weekend of mixed emotions,” said Harrison. “The race was pretty panic-free but it was hard work to keep the turbo going – I couldn’t run on the highest power setting to make sure it wasn’t too stressed.”
Second for Fabby and Townsend was also a turnaround from 17th in the opener. The pair were forced out of the lead by a broken driveshaft on lap two – which the team replaced in two minutes – handing victory to the RAW Motorsport pairing of Steve Burgess and Ben Dimmack, who were debuting their Radical RXC Coupe.
It wasn’t the perfect debut for the car, though, as a mistake in the closing minutes of race two denied the duo another podium. Defending from Wylie in the SB Race Engineering Ferrari 488 Challenge, Dimmack outbraked himself into Clervaux and got beached in the gravel, gifting Wylie and reigning champion Bailey a second podium of the weekend.
An urge to get back out on track after the lockdown was the catalyst for Caterham 420R racer Henry Heaton to take pole and all three Caterham Graduates victories.
Using a Sigma 150-class car hired from CTS Motorsport, the only threat to Heaton’s clean sweep was gearbox concerns in the final 25-minute race.
“The first two races were fine, but in the last one I could hear that the gearbox was starting to sound not quite right so I had to manage it to the end,” he explained. “This is a new championship for me – I normally race a 420R but I’ve not been out this year, so I decided to have a crack at this and it’s turned out not too bad a weekend at all.”
Sy Harraway battled a misfire throughout the weekend as he took a heat win together with victory in both finals to make a strong start to his
Legends Championship campaign.
Harraway fended off heat three winner Miles Rudman in the first final, and said it was thanks to ‘trust and respect’ with heats one and two winner Jack Parker that he could secure victory in the second final.
They duelled door-to-door throughout the final lap, before Harraway’s better launch out of the hairpin allowed him to snatch victory by just 0.078s over Parker.
Following a heat win and a podium in the first final, reigning champion Rudman failed to make the start for the final race of the weekend as a melted ignition switch gave him an early setback to his title defence.
Two victories in the Croft sunshine allowed Lewis Saunders to continue his 100% start to the Junior Saloons season, after both races were red-flagged for first-lap clashes that put cars in the Clervaux gravel trap. Saunders’s comfortable victory in the first was thanks to a battle for second between Alex Solley and Charlie Hand, but the second proved more difficult. Saunders started this one from fourth, but the Ciceley Motorsport driver fought his way to the front and then held off a late charge from Hand to make it four wins from four this season.
Neven Kirkpatrick took a Super Mighty Minis double “by a headlight” as he twice fought off the attentions of Ian Slark. Kirkpatrick benefited from a battle between Slark and Steven Rideout to pull clear in the opening encounter, but said it was “really hard work” to keep Slark behind in the second as he won by just 0.094s after a mirror-to-mirror drag to the line.