Atkins ends Equipe season on a high with Silverstone victory
SILVERSTONE EQUIPE 10 SEPTEMBER
Equipe Classic Racing’s flagship series, Equipe GTS, finished the day at Silverstone and finished the season for its participants, bringing the first year of the club promoting its own race meetings to a close. Lee Atkins steered his TVR to the final victory of the day from the sister Grantura of Rob Cull, who had in turn found his way past
Neil Fisher’s MGB.
Atkins, who has had an up and down season, got a great start and consistently kept a good gap to Cull and Fisher, even through contrasting pitstop strategies. Atkins dived in at half-distance, with
Cull opting to stop slightly earlier. This required him to put in some fast laps to ensure he emerged ahead of Fisher and also safely saw off a pack that included Andrew Wenman’s Morgan and another TVR driven by Jack Wilmott. Neither of these cars finished, however, with Wilmott ending up backwards in a barrier by Copse. Mark Holme, in his
MGB, had earlier scraps with Wilmott and Dominic Mooney’s MGB before finishing fourth. Mooney was sixth, behind Marc Gordon’s Lotus Elite.
Still in his first full season of racing, Dafyd Richards secured his third win of the year in the Pre-’63/50s race. As a sports-racing car, his Lotus 11 had to start from the pitlane despite qualifying on pole, but he steadily picked off his rivals and took the lead fairly late on from the Jaguar E-type driven by
Harvey Stanley and Frederic Laurent.
Stanley had been extremely quick during the first stint but Laurent could not quite keep up the pace and appeared to be struggling with other issues towards the end, being passed by a waiting Richards and then Holme’s Austin-healey 3000 in the closing stages. Alexander Hewitson was fourth in his Healey and looked as if he was jostling for position with the E-type, but he was a lap down. The Healey of Guy and Simon Parry-williams was involved at the front early on, but retired on lap 27 of 34.
Laurent and Stanley had laid their cards on the table in the Equipe Libre race, starting from pole and surviving a very lairy first trip round Copse, which had several casualties, including Rick Wilmott’s E-type and Joseph Wilmott’s Austin-healey 3000, but thankfully no stoppages. The superior power of Matthew Moore and Mark
Daniell’s stark aluminium AC Cobra was too great for the Jaguar, however, and they were worthy winners, but they had to work hard to keep their lead mid-race. A safety-car period neutralised their early advantage, before they were able to stretch it out again later. Hewitson did briefly hold second after the stops, while Moore and Daniell got away, but Stanley had left the Healey behind by the time the flag fell.
Elsewhere, James Wheeler was crowned the BCV8 champion after a pair of wins. With dropped scores taken into account, he needed to have some space between him and his nearest challenger, Neil Fowler. Fowler tried his hardest with two second places, but Wheeler still clinched the title.
The Production GTI racers, who shared a grid with the BMWS of Z Cars (twice topped by Edd Giddings), still have a meeting to go. Henry Riley and Simon Hill took a win apiece after polesitter Simon Vercoe was unable to convert his pace to podium finishes.