Goossens back to Brands in NASCAR
The return of Euro NASCAR to Brands Hatch this weekend offers a veteran racer a chance of glory 30 years on from Festival win that set him on his way
After a year’s enforced absence due to COVID-19,
Euro NASCAR roars back onto UK soil this weekend to a soundtrack of throbbing 5.7-litre V8 engines at Brands Hatch’s American Speedfest. To say that plenty has changed in the world at large since its last visit in June 2019 would be an understatement, but the calibre of drivers competing at the sharp end certainly hasn’t.
Its leading light is three-time series champion Alon Day, who notched up his latest title in last year’s pandemic-afflicted season of five rounds packed between September and December, while the returning series regulars include 1997 Formula 1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve and Belgian veteran Marc Goossens, who 30 years ago marked himself out as a name to watch by winning a typically frantic Formula Ford Festival (see page 59).
The 51-year-old would go on to become a race winner in Formula 3000, finishing third in the standings in 1995 and 1996, with only a lack of budget preventing an F1 graduation. Following a stint in Japan,
‘The Goose’earned a reputation as an F3000 troubleshooter, which explains his presence alongside young Astromega team-mate and race winner Fernando Alonso on the podium at Spa in 2000.
Now with 13 Le Mans 24 Hours starts under his belt and 10 in the Daytona 24 Hours (he has twice finished third at Daytona), Goossens is also one of few European drivers to have raced in the NASCAR Cup series, making him well-placed to assess the merits of Euro NASCAR. “It’s the most fun championship I know right now,”he asserts.“it’s back-to-basics, you have a four-speed manual gearbox, H-pattern, carburettor to take care of, so it’s still the real deal.”
Goossens’s two NASCAR Cup outings for Robert Yates Racing (both on road courses, at Watkins Glen in 2006 and Sonoma in 2007) came during a period of excess for the series where he found regular employment as a test and development driver. Testing was drastically cut back when the global economic crisis of 2008 struck, closing the door on further opportunities in NASCAR. But he says the 400bhp European equivalents have many of the same qualities, even if they are underpowered compared to their US counterparts (“back in
2006 I had 850 in my Roush-yates engine”) to reduce costs.
“The pure form of racing, I did find that in Europe,”he says.
“In order to be successful in building a series in Europe, you have to make sure that it is affordable and I think they did a very good job in putting together what they have now. If you look at the numbers, you’ll realise pretty soon that for drivers or sponsors, there are not a lot of championships that go all over Europe and are so cost-effective, because it’s not very expensive for the amount of exposure that you can get.”
Goossens explains that €85-90,000 is deemed“a pretty good budget for the season”and would likely include a pre-season test day, but points out that, as with any form of motor racing, “you can make it as expensive as you want”.
“There are also teams that are charging €120,000 per driver,” he says,“but I don’t know what they do with the €40,000 extra…
“IT’S THE MOST FUN CHAMPIONSHIP I KNOW RIGHT NOW. IT’S BACK-TOBASICS – IT’S STILL THE REAL DEAL”
It all comes down to having a good car that we can put a good show on with. It’s close racing, we all have the same cars, and the whole bumping thing and rubbing doors, it’s hard to do that in an Audi R8 [GT3] if you know the financial impact of hitting someone.
It’s action-packed, to put it that way.”
Goossens’s Euro NASCAR journey began with Braxx Racing in 2016, although IMSA Sportscar Championship commitments that year and in 2017 caused him to miss a few rounds.“then, after that, we had some difficult seasons with Braxx to get the finances together to go and run a proper programme,”he says.
This prompted a switch to former GP2 team Racing Engineering for 2020, only for the Spanish squad to pull out of the series“about three weeks after we made the deal”. A return to Braxx appeared on the cards until the pandemic hit –“so two deals collapsed before we even got started”– but a last-minute agreement with CAAL Racing secured Goossens’s place on the grid, and he ended the year fifth in the points.
A late deal with Norbert Walchhofer’s DF1 team“about a week before the whole show started”meant he hadn’t tested before this year’s first round at Valencia in May. “Of course I always want to win, but you cannot always win, so I decided for that first weekend to stay out of trouble,”he says.
In this he succeeded, managing two top-10 finishes to come away eighth in the standings, ahead of Day, who was pushed off in race two.“the first thing I did was try to put the whole DF1 team on my shoulders and carry them along,”he says.“i don’t necessarily know how it all needs to be done, but I know a lot about how it shouldn’t be done! I’m still very motivated; my body still allows me to try to perform at that kind of level and I’m not broken on Monday and Tuesday. I think I’m still competitive enough.
“Team FJ [series promoter] is putting a pretty good show together. It shows every year in Brands Hatch because the crowds that come out for that race, it’s unbelievable.”
Given Goossens’s history with the Kent circuit, where he has six topfive finishes with a best of second place (2018) in eight Euro NASCAR appearances, he’s naturally looking forward to Brands.“it’s a track that I like, where I have been fairly successful in the last 30 years, so I have a lot of expectations for Brands,”he says.“i’m here to win, and if I can take myself to a position where I can challenge for podium finishes or top fives that would be great. We have to keep digging to make the whole performance of the group better, so that we win races soon.”