The 3 Amigos double up in the Birkett
SILVERSTONE 750MC BIRKETT RELAY 24 OCTOBER
In a feat unprecedented in the 70-year history of the 750 Motor Club’s Birkett Six-hour Team Relay race, BMW Compact drivers Paul Hinson, David Drinkwater and Adam Read won the handicap title for a second year running.
Nineteenth after the first hour around Silverstone’s Grand Prix circuit on Saturday, during which Read’s engine failed, The 3 Amigos roared back as a rain shower intensified to lead at the two-thirds mark. They hung on to defeat a trio of jostling VW Fun Cup equipes, which completed a lap more, but received two fewer credit laps.
The wetter the weather became, the more the endurance specialists in their tubeframe silhouette Beetles imposed themselves among the 69-car field.
Despite opener James Little’s front wheelarch being savaged by a Radical, which crabbed back to the pits with broken suspension, Team 7 WASPP – with Mark Blundell’s 1987 Formula
3000 race engineer Martin Angeloni on spanners – earned second overall, edging arch-rivals Premature Acceleration and JPR Fun Cup Boys with debutant Kristian Rose.
Debutantes Sarah Hobson and Kelly Brabin teamed up with Lee Mabbett and Dave Traviss in Toyota Celicas under the Se7en Motorsports banner to grab a strong fifth, pipping Area Motorsport’s zippy Honda Civic Type Rs and William Beech in a VW Golf ahead of Kevin Dengate’s Red Rascals. Fourth piloting BMW M3s in last year’s monsoon, they slipped to seventh in Mazda MX-5S this year.
Rally convert Sacha Kakad and his 2017 Dubai 24 Hours class-winning Audi RS3 LMS put Simpson Motorsport on top after an hour, but the mixed squad, including a substitute Citroen C1, were swallowed by the pack and finished 23rd. RAF Team Hurrican claimed armed-services glory after David Russell’s BMW M3 slid into the gravel at Club, disadvantaging the feisty fliers’ sister outfit RAF Team Spitfire.
The fight for Scratch honours – greatest distance covered – quickly distilled into a two-horse Radical SR3 race between the quicker of RJ Motorsport’s teams, for which EUROBOSS ace Scott Mansell set the race’s best lap, and RAW Motorsport.
The latter’s tactics had to change when start driver Shane Stoney pitted his car with a sticky throttle following a post-practice cable change. As the their routine stops
were now out of kilter, the lead changed several times, but RAW’S Tom Ashton and John Macleod kept circulating like clockwork while Stoney’s machine was fixed and returned. With RJM’S Mansell closing by as much as 12 seconds per lap in the slippery final stages, the steadier Macleod handed back to Ashton to make sure.
The second RJM team finished third, nine laps adrift, anchored by stalwart Charles Graham, who had transferred from Breakell’s Heroes when last year’s winners committed to Revolution’s Portuguese Grand Prix support race. Historic Formula 1 and F5000 racer Neil Glover was an addition to the line-up.
Behind the sports-racers, RNR Performance Cars’ Ferrari quartet – headed by Nigel Jenkins’s stunning yellow 458 Challenge – hounded down Carl Swift’s Area Motorsport SEAT Leon Eurocup to snatch fourth on the line.
More remarkable, though, were the three 7 Race Series Caterham 420R regional teams, which finished sixth, seventh and eighth having fought every inch of the way.
The Midlands quartet repassed the Northern Monkeys in the gloom to win a mighty private battle by a lap, with the Southern crew a second adrift at the flag.