Hall’s late error hands Sports Car glory to rival Stretton
Philip Hall and his Lola T212 seemed to have Sunday’s thrilling Historic Sports Cars enduro in the bag after a perfectly timed pit stop. But Martin Stretton had other ideas, closing the gap remorselessly in a T210 and forcing Hall into a mistake two laps from the end of the race.
Hall chased Stretton’s co-driver Mark Piercy for 15 laps and stopped along with almost everyone else as soon as the pit window opened during a caution period. Piercy stayed out longer, and left Stretton to rejoin in a bunch of cars nearly half a minute behind.
Hall looked safe even as the pressure mounted, but with his eyes on the mirrors he strayed into a gravel trap out of sight of most of the crowd and crossed the line easing off, more than six seconds behind.
“I left him plenty of work to do, but we knew he could get there,” said Piercy. Stretton added: “I enjoyed every minute of it. I was on the ragged edge every lap.”
Into a surprised third came Chris Beighton and Simon Hadfield in their Lola T70 GT. Beighton had an adventure early on and lay 23rd at one stage, but recovered into the top 10. The safety car helped a bit more, and Hadfield grabbed third after a tussle with Stefano Rosina’s DFVpowered Mclaren M8C, which stopped after an excursion.
Carlos Monteverde and Gary Pearson’s T70 GT came home fourth and the smaller Lolas of Robert Oldershaw (T212) and Nick Pink/scott Mansell (T210) finished fifth and sixth.