Round Seven of the Avon Tyres British GT Championship at Brands Hatch proved to be a tumultuous affair for the Trackspeed Racing team, with only one of their three Porsches making it to the finish line. It was a mix of collisions, punctures and mechanical issues that ultimately kept the Surrey based team from scoring any points in the team or drivers championship this weekend.
Although the ‘Tartan Terror’ of Gregor Fisken and Stephen Jelley had started eighteenth on the grid due to some set-up issues in qualifying, the No.32 Porsche was still considered a points scoring contender for the two-hour race. With Fisken at the wheel for the start, he was soon making progress through the order, until lap three, when the United Autosports Audi of Mark Patterson knocked him into a spin. Although the Scotsman was able to recover and rejoin proceedings at the back of the pack, his 997RSR had damage to it’s front splitter and rear body work.
A few laps later, the team called Fisken in to the pits, where mechanics completely removed the damaged splitter and sent him back out onto the 2.4 mile Grand Prix circuit. Despite the lack of front grip due to the now missing part, Fisken pushed on in a bid to catch the field who were now more than a minute ahead.
With just over 50 minutes of the race complete, former BTCC racer Jelley, took over driving duties, but his time at the helm was to be short lived. As a result of the earlier incident with the Audi, which had sent Fisken into the wall, the exhaust had become damaged. The knock-on effect meant that it was rubbing on the left rear wheel and blowing hot gases onto the tyre. This caused the rubber to finally give way on lap 53, causing even more damage to the bodywork, and sending the car into retirement.
For David Ashburn and Nick Tandy, a series of issues in the No.31 Porsche saw their lead in the drivers championship evaporate. For the opening stages of the race, Ashburn had kept to the team strategy to put the car in a points scoring position. By the time the pit-stop window opened, the polka-dotted 997RSR was in a healthy sixth position, with Porsche factory driver Tandy set to take over. However, in a moment of confusion, when Ashburn headed into the pits, he stopped at the wrong garage, and found himself boxed in by other cars making their stops. It was more than a minute before the Trackspeed team owner was able to get going again, complete another lap, and make his scheduled stop, putting the car two-laps down on the leaders.
Undeterred, Tandy headed out onto the circuit, in hope of retrieving the situation and make it to the finish. Alas, it wasn’t to be though, as a short while later, the car developed a gearbox problem, which forced him back to the pits and out of the race.
Following the issues with their sister cars, it was left to Phil Keen and Jon Minshaw to fly the Trackspeed flag and save the day. Minshaw had put in an accomplished performance for his opening stint, pushing the Demon Tweaks livered No.33 Porsche as high as fifth. That was until lap 19, when he was sent into a spin by Mark Poole’s Barwell Aston Martin. Despite this, Minshaw was able to recover and bring his car to pit-lane and hand over to Keen in a commendable tenth place – still in the points. Continuing Minshaw’s good work, Keen pushed the 997 to it’s limits and worked his way into the top-five, until a puncture forced the Englishman to dive into the pits once again.
After rejoining proceedings, Keen worked his way back to tenth position, until, with a few minutes remaining, race officials ordered him back to pit-road to repair the undertray on his car. This effectively destroyed any hopes of securing points, as he’d dropped to twelfth place by the time he’d returned to the track, 11 seconds behind a pair of BMW’s.
With Ashburn and Tandy failing to secure points at Brands Hatch, they drop to seventh in the Avon Tyres British GT Championship standings, 27.5 off the new leader, Andrew Howard. Fisken now occupies twelfth on the leader-board, whilst Minshaw and Keen share fifteenth spot. In the team Championship, Trackspeed Racing continue to lead, with a margin of 41 points over the Beechdean Aston Martin team.
Trackspeed return to action in four weeks time, with a pair of one-hour races at the legendary Zandvoort circuit in the Netherlands, where they’ll look to bounce back from a weekend to forget at Brands Hatch.
Quotes
Gregor Fisken: “After the last two races where we’ve been involved in first lap incidents, it’s a great shame to have been spun off again. However, I didn’t lose too much time, and I was actually catching back up with the back of the field when the boys pulled me in because the front splitter had an issue, which they completely removed. There after I had big under-steer with the front end not working. I decided then to really get my head down and make every single lap a qualifying one, to see how quickly I could drive. I was really chuffed when they were saying “you’re the fastest car on track” and in the end when I got out, I was absolutely wringing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. No there’s not a result, but it was great to see the car get back from zip to thirteenth and then twelfth, because Stephen was carrying the car really well. With the damage on the rear that caused a broken exhaust, which heated up the rear too much and we had a big tyre explosion on the back. It was a shame to have to park it, but I think there was a lot of positives to come out of this weekend.”
Stephen Jelley: “Basically the pace of the car was very good, but unfortunately, Gregor had an incident in his stint and hit the wall, which broke the front splitter, tat meant he had to pit and have it pulled off, so we lost all front-end grip. Where he hit the barrier, he’d squashed and cracked the exhaust, which caused there to be no heat shielding on the rear tyre. It then melted the side-wall of the tyre, which made it unsafe to continue, so the team called it. The pace in the car would have been good, which I think Phil showed, and if everything had gone to plan, a win would have been on the cards, which we’ve just got to remember going into Zandvoort.”
Nick Tandy: “In the end we stopped the race because we had some type of failure in the gearbox, but of course the race was already over for us by then. David done such a great job throughout his whole stint. It was such a good drive, we were still in the race, top six, exactly like we had planned, but then there was a bit of confusion in the pit-lane, where he got stuck down the bottom and lost about three minutes. It was game over from then. To be fair, if we were running top-three and had a gearbox problem, we’d be a lot more annoyed than if we were already out of the race.”
Source : British GT