With Jody Firth and Warren Hughes having traded in their Porsche for a BMW in British GT, the question arises as to what will happen to the second Trackspeed car for the final two races of the season, and….. well, you kind of knew this was going to happen:
“The second car will be there and it will be driven by me and Nick Tandy at both rounds,” said Trackspeed owner David Ashburn. “I wasn’t going to just leave it sitting there – it is my car, after all – so I’m coming out of retirement.”
For the 2010 British GT Champion, now 66 years old, this will be the third consecutive season that he has raced after ‘officially’ retiring from the driver’s seat, but it really did look as though the fireproofs would remain in the wardrobe for the duration of 2014 until the Firth/Hughes news broke.
“I don’t blame Jody for going to BMW,” he said. “He’s had a tough year – it wasn’t until the fourth round that we finally got the Blancpain restrictor we’d been pleading for – and while the car is now competitive, the extra 75kg that he has to run with means it continues to be a struggle for him. He’s a racing driver and he needs results so he’s going to see how he gets on with a Z4.”
So will Trackspeed be sticking with Porsche in 2015? “Of course – we are a Porsche team! We’ve run the cars for ten years now and it would be difficult to leave and go to another marque. As I said, the car is now competitive in the UK and we will continue with the 997 R until the new car comes along.”
Ashburn and Tandy will join Spa winners Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen on the grid at Brands Hatch on August 31st and at Donington a fortnight later. The two driving partners failed to finish any of the longer-duration races last season in ‘Spotty’, but did win three of the sprint races, so it will be interesting to see how they fare this time around.
