Simon Clark’s migration from Porsches to the McLaren has been impressive
Mark and Peter Cunningham, after many, many years of loyally contesting the various iterations of Britcar championships, took their first overall win, in their self-run SG Racing Porsche 991.2. It was a close call, though, they took a drive-through penalty for a pit-stop infringement along the way, and but for a late-race Safety Car period, victory may well have gone to Simon Clark in the Velocity / FormEvo McLaren 570s. Practice and qualifying data identified that in Mark’s hands, the Porsche, the only true Challenge class competitor, could lap four to five seconds quicker than the rest of the field, with Peter’s pace about equivalent to the fastest of the GT contingent, which was headed by Clark’s McLaren, and the impressive Michael Knibbs in the Hills Motorsport Ginetta G55 Supercup. Sadly not making the grid though, was the Team BRIT McLaren, an exhaust fire in testing having destroyed the wiring loom, and after an all-nighter installing new components, a misfire could not be rectified.
Army Sport Car Racing’s Ginetta in the in for a tyre change
As expected, Mark Cunningham was off like a robber’s dog when the red lights went out for the rolling start, six seconds to the good at the end of the first lap, another five seconds next time around, but his buffer of nearly 23 seconds over Clark’s McLaren at the end of lap four was brought down by the appearance of the Safety Car. Sadly, Michael Knibbs’ Ginetta had expired from an impressive third place after just one lap; the ex-Mazda racer had parked in a safe place, but just a little later, the pursuit Of Nick Casey’s Box 3 Ginetta by Army Sportscar’s similar machine started by Will Ashmore ended with the olive-green and dayglo car beached in the gravel, requiring a caution period for recovery. The pit window opened, ironically, the moment the caution was lifted, and Mark Cunningham sped away again, but not for long, pitting seven laps later with a margin of just over half a minute, handing the lead to Clark, who had managed to put a semblance of distance between his McLaren and Marin Addison’s Aston Martin.
Colin White’s solo drive of the CWS Ginettta led to a class P3 and 3rd overall
By this time, Finn Leslie’s battle in the Project 29:7 Ginetta with Greg Saunders’ Cupra for the Trophy class lead, came to an end out on the circuit with drive shaft failure for the Ginetta. The Cunningham pit stop initiated a flurry of first-stoppers, including Rob Ellick’s TSR Performance Cupra, which had been making places through the Trophy field. With differing strategies, the order became jumbled during the 54-minute pit window, but after the first-stoppers had settled, it could be ascertained that the de facto lead was being contested by Colin White’s Ginetta, and Peter Cunningham in the erstwhile-leading Porsche, though Cunningham would take drive-through penalty for pit infringements. Clark took his stops late – the first with 33 minutes of the race left, and the second just two minutes before the window closed, retaining the lead throughout. Peter Cunningham made the second stop for the SG Racing Porsche at the same time – new tyres for the left-hand side were fitted before Mark Cunningham jumped in for a final 20-minute stint. Once the timing had settled, Cunningham was in sixth place and around 45 seconds adrift of Clark’s lead, which could be nominally be eroded in around six or seven laps, given the previous pace of the two protagonists, but In a deja-vu moment of irony, the Safety Car was deployed moments after the pit window closed , and, as the first caution, it was for the Army Sportscar Ginetta, Jonathan Candler now at the wheel.
Still awaiting an engine for their Porsche, Avery and Hull were out in their Cupra again at Oulton for a Challenge class 2nd
Clerk Andy Butler had done his reckoning-up of the pity infringements, and meted-out stop/go penalties of various lengths to Colin White, Will Lynch’s BMW, and Asha Silva, who had replaced Noah Cosby in the Team BRIT BMW GT4, and was at that point third overall. The field went green again with just five minutes of racing left, leading to some frenetic action on a crowded track. Cunningham made short work of the five cars between himself and Clark, just two-thirds of a lap was all it took, and the win was theirs, not an easy win as it could have been, which made it all the more worthy. Simon Clark decided discretion was the better part of valour, having no obvious answer to the outright pace of the Porsche, so focusing on maintaining a gap back to Colin White’s Ginetta, which had been up and down the order, but despite a late drive-through, was just 0.725 seconds behind the class-winning McLaren at the flag, these two being the winner and runner-up the GT class.. There were two other Challenge class cars in the race, but being Trophy class machines trading-up for quite different reasons, didn’t figure in the overall top flight; the Cupra of Richard Avery and Nick Hull had trailed the Peugeot 308 of Henry Swanson and Bruno Costa for most of the race, but the final dash after the late-race Safety Car period saw Avery reduce a nine-second deficit to next to nothing, then seize the class runner-up spot from Costa at the very last corner.
Greg Saunders took the Trophy class win
By dint of not taking the stop/gp penalty, Asha Silva forfeited her third place in the GT class, a post-race penalty dropping the Team BRIT BMW down to eighth, with Juilan McBride taking the final class podium slot in his Geoff Steel-run BMW M3, ahead of stablemate Peter Moulsdale’s M2, which had snatched the place from Nick Casey’s Ginetta after a moment of over-exuberance from the Box 3 pilot, while Martin Addison was just 0.213 behind, having run at the class helm earlier in the race, and a skirmish with White’s Ginetta during dad Bill’s mid-race stint needing some rear-end repair to the Aston Martin that saw tape flailing like party streamers as the race finished. There were woes too for the Datum Motorsport Ginetta of Maurizio Sciglio and Marco Anastasi – having ran well all race, they were lined-up for fifth in class, but a bump from behind, and a left rear puncture saw Sciglio cross the line on three wheels, class seventh, while multiple pit stops and two extractions from the gravel saw the Army Sportscar Ginetta of Ashmore, Candler and Gilding take the flag ninth in class. The Trophy class suffered attrition.
Ash Woodman’s unique EDF-run Ligier JS2R
Gregg Saunders was an early leader in the Capture Motorsport Cupra, but the demise of three notable challengers -the Project 29:7 Ginetta, then the Seat Supercopa of Jamie and Chris Hayes, and finally Archie Buttles’s Ginetta – left it to lone driver Alex Turnbull to take the baton, and he did; Turnbull was ahead at the closure of the pit window, but the late caution bunched the field up, and Saunders reclaimed his lead three laps from the end, under a second separating them at the flag, while another impressive performance from father-and-son duo Ian and Elliott Wilson claimed the fInal class podium spot in the Velocity-run Ginetta. The usual feisty run by TSR’s Rob Ellick and Fynn Jones saw their Cupra finish fourth, while Ash Woodman is getting to grips with the unique EDF-run Ligier JS2R, finishing fifth with one of the ultra-bright headlamps missing and the aperture taped over, ahead of William Lynch’s BMW E90 M3, while the luckless Chris Murphy did what he could in a replacement car from his usual BMW M3, seventh in class.
Overall podium
Julian McBride received the Sunoco Driver of the Day award
Greg Saunders was awarded Britcar Driver of the Day
Words: Steve Wood, photos: Stevie Borowik, Chris Valentine, Steve Jackman and Paul Cherry