The first major all Touring Car 24 Hour race of the 21st century was won by a team, a car and a driver with 24 Hour race winning success at Silverstone at the end of an event that saw the first visit by the Creventic organisation’s 24H Series to Silverstone.
After starting from the back of the 41 car grid following driveshaft failure in qualifying the #246 Team ABBA with Rollcentre Racing BMW M3 V8, the very same car that won the Britcar 24 Hours in 2012 the car made rapid progress through the order in the hands of Richard Neary, up to fourth overall in rapid order, before poor weather intervened with many runners suffering incident and accident in streaming wet conditions, the track surface made trickier still by a major engine failure for the #173 VDS Adventures Honda during the worst of the weather.
Through it all the #127 TCR class Seat Leon of Sebastien Bleekemolen’s Bleekemolen Racing team hit the front, Sebastien himself very rapid, ably supported by Melvin de Groot, Pim van Riet and Dennis de Borst before the weather arrived, and stretched its advantage gradually as its pace told and others faltered.
At one point the advantage stretched to almost five laps with the similar Seats of Memac Ogilvy (#1, Ramzi Moutran/Nabil Moutran/Sami Moutran/Phil Quaife) and Red Camel jordans.nl (#303, Rik Breukers/Ivo Breukers/Bert de Heus) struggling to hang on in there with the #246 BMW also looking to make up lost ground.
Into daylight the worst of the weather eased and the chasing pack began to match or at times better the pace of the leading car.
The most convincing chase was soon mounted by the #246 with good strategy, and an inspired early move to slicks grabbing back 2 of the, by then, four laps that the BMW crew were in arrears to the leader.
With Martin Short (race winner of the inaugural Britcar 24 Hours in 20015 with Rollcentre Racing) and Richard Neary alternating some excellent 2 hour stints through the night in the very worst of the weather, and then consolidating the charge into daylight, the pair eventually totalling 9 hours at the wheel apiece, there were supporting roles only for Charles Lamb, who put in a fine stint into Sunday afternoon, and the mysteriously monickered Richard Roberts, aka Ricky Bobby, aka Darren Cox, yes THAT Darren Cox, the ex NISMO motorsport chief putting in a solid stint on the Saturday evening and then being entrusted to bring the car home for the final 90 minutes, this more challenging that it otherwise might have been for two reasons, rain on part of the circuit, and the fact that, by that point, it was the BMW that held a healthy lead, this courtesy of the earlier strategic moves and then a shock engine failure that put the leading #127 car out with several hours to go, this after leading the race for 15 hours.
With the #303 and #1 Seats following the BMW home to complete the 1,2,3 overall, and the plucky #208 Team Altran Peugeot 208 GTI (Guillaume Roman/Thierry Blaise/Stéphane Ventaja/Bradley Philpot/Sarah Bovy) coming home a fine fourth, winner in A3 even after losing 35 minutes following a failed drive-by noise test the final results saw all six class winners in the overall top 9 with the Cup 1 class for BMW M235i Racing one-make cars won by the JJ Racing/ Barwell Motorsport #154 car (Mark Lemmer, Mark Poole, Richard Abra, Timur Sardarov), and the D1 class winner finishing in fifth position, the Belgian RECY Racing Team BMW 120D (#194, Jan de Vocht/Johan van Loo/Wim Meulders/Thomas Piessens/Erik Crabbe).
At the line the top three managed a photo friendly finish, the winner completing 512 laps of the Silverstone GP circuit, but behind the A2 lead battle was still raging after the lead changed in the final minutes the final gap less than a second as the #212 presenza.eu Racing Team Renault Clio (Tim Söderhamn/Niels Nyboe/Mads Pedersen/Ole Klitgaard/Christian Rytter) pushed hard to re-take the advantage of the surviving #216 Modena Engineering Renault (Wayne Shen/Francis Tjia/John Shen) but fell short by eight tenths of a second on the line.
