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Silverstone 12/13th April 2008
Qualifying
The National circuit at Silverstone has long straights and very few corners, which tends to produce a time sheet on which everyone is very evenly matched. This proved to be the case in this qualifying session with the top ten runners covered by a second or less for most of the session until, right at the end, Graham Heard pulled a stunning lap out of the bag to take pole position, almost a second faster than anyone else. Will Penrose and Simon Regitz confirmed their form from Snetterton by taking second and third positions while newcomer Gary Chandler secured 4th. Less than two seconds covered second to ninth.
Race 1
It had been threatening rain all day and inevitably, as the cars were lined up in the collecting area for the first race, it began to fall heavily. Too late to change settings on the cars, so everyone was stuck with racing on a “dry setup”. The organisers allowed two warm up laps so that the drivers could get used to the conditions and by the time that the drivers lined up on the grid, the rain had stopped. There was not time for the track to dry however so the race would take place on a soaking wet track in brilliant sunshine.
As the red light went out, Will Penrose got the best start relegating Graham Heard into second by the first corner. Further down the field some drivers were trying to make up places and left braking for the first corner very late. Inevitably there was a spinner and most of the field was forced into avoiding action. The clear winner from the situation was Matt Davies who anticipating trouble had taken a cautious approach to the first corner and emerged from the chaos in third place.
The clear loser was Simon Regitz. With cars close to either side he had no choice but to brake to avoid the spinning Richard Mowbray which resulted in an impact from behind from Alastair Kirkham. That sent Simon spinning as well. He was then collected in a huge impact by both Gareth Broadbent and Nico Ferrari. With the back of his car very badly damaged his race was over on the spot. Gareth also pulled to a halt at the side of the track, got out of the car, decided the damage wasn’t terminal and got back in and continued. He eventually finished 9th! Richard Mowbray also got going again finishing, amazingly, in third. Unfortunately Simon had no choice but to watch the race from behind the tyre wall.
The impact with Simon’s car had not done a huge amount of damage to Nico Ferrari’s car but had resulted in Nico’s head making contact with the roll cage. He managed to undo his seat belts when the car came to a halt but then passed out. Marshalls were quickly in attendance as was the Doctor’s car, and they managed to remove Nico from the car and take him to the medical centre. He was pronounced fit and well at the medical centre but later spent the night in hospital under observation. To the relief of everyone Nico was back at the circuit the following day although he was under instructions not to race in Race 2.
Meanwhile, Race 1 progressed in an orderly procession. Almost everyone had been held up by the first corner incident so there were very few close battles going on, with the drivers being most concerned about staying on the track. The closest battle was between the leaders with Graham Heard trying his hardest to make up time on leader Will Penrose. Eventually he paid for his efforts by sliding off out of second place and into the gravel trap at the entrance to the complex just before the start of the last lap. Will was so much faster than everyone else that he managed to lap the entire field with the exception of second and third places.
Well done to all the drivers for managing to stay on the track without any other major incidents, on what was a truly horrendously slippery track.
Race 2
The weather for Race 2 was almost a re-run of the previous day but fortunately, heavy rain an hour before the start had all dried by the time the red lights went out.
Unbelievably, taking the start for race 2 was Simon Regitz whose car had been repaired overnight. It still looked rather the worse for wear but was raceworthy enough for Simon to achieve a sixth place finish after starting from the back.
Both the front row starters, Will Penrose and Matt Davies, had poor starts, but Matts was marginally worse. They both managed to keep ahead of the rest of the field though, and started a race long tussle that saw them finish less than half a second apart. Each lap Matt would get alongside Will down the back straight but Will always had the inside line under the bridge and kept the lead through the complex. On every lap Matt was later on the brakes going into Beckets but never by enough to actually get ahead and they finished in the same order as they started.
Behind them a similar battle was going on for third and fourth between Richard Mowbray and Graham Heard who, starting from the back row of the grid, was amazingly in third place by the end of lap 4. Steve Brown was in the mix for third and fourth throughout the race as well. Also showing well in the early laps was Paul Crawford although he faded to 9th by the end. Graham was having major problems with tyres and his progress down towards Beckets was marked by clouds of tyre smoke on almost every lap. Eventually the lack of grip told and he ran wide at Copse allowing Richard to retake 3rd place which he held to the end. Right up there with them was Steve Brown who later claimed his fourth place was due to using up his entire season's allocation of good luck!
Congratulations to everyone on some clean and very exciting racing and I’m sure that everyone is looking forward to the next round at Oulton Park on 10th May.
Photographs of the races at Silverstone
Race Results and Time sheets provided by Timing Solutions Ltd.
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