The first of Monday’s two hour races started just before noon in light rain but with a track still deemed too wet to avoid having to start behind the McLaren safety car.
The hour began to count down as soon as the cars moved off the grid and four laps were completed before the racing proper began. It was a nightmare start, or rather lack of, for the #66 Parker Mercedes with Nick Jones unable to get the car away from the grid until a full lap had been lost.
With the safety car clearing the track with 10 minutes already gone, Flick Haigh eased into a relatively comfortable lead she was not to lose. Mark Farmer span the #11 Aston Martin to the inside of the circuit at Old Hall as Jon Minshaw put a move on him on the outside. Farmer rejoined at the tail end of the field. Derek Johnston and Sam de Haan also had less significant slithery moments at Hislops on the first full pace lap and the latter lost a bit of momentum whereas the former lost 10 places to make it a torrid start to TF Sport’s campaign.
Minshaw was the man on the move in a positive way, he pulled a repeat move on Rick Parfitt Jnr. on the next lap into Old Hall to emerge in second place and begin hunting down Haigh’s Aston Martin.
Haigh drove beautifully in the #75 Aston Martin though and pitted from a clear lead over Minshaw and Andrew Howard, who had moved the #99 Beechdean Aston Martin to a somewhat lonely third place. The Bentleys had ran closely together in fourth and fifth, Loggie filling Parfitt Jnr’s cockpit with bursts of flashing headlights before taking the place into Old Hall with a third of the race gone. Mowle and the two other Barwell Lamborghinis were having their own battle behind. Minshaw had been the best in traffic and the Lamborghini had looked exceptionally balanced in what were still very difficult conditions.
“It feels amazing! I’m shocked, to be honest,” Haigh said. “When Jonny got in he had a real fight on his hands with Phil Keen, I was fortunate enough to get a lead early on so he had the hard job, really! The conditions were tough: it’s a balancing act to push hard enough but without making any mistakes.”
In GT4 the opening drama was BMW related, first an excursion at Cascades for Ben Tuck in the #42 car on the first lap at pace, then a coming together between the #43 BMW and the #62 Aston Martin at Deer Leap, the BMW moving out onto the racing line and the Aston Martin having nowhere to go, snapping sideways and nosing heavily straight into the tyres to driver’s left. The Aston recovered to the pits with front end damage and it was race over.
The #53 also had a grassy (and therefore muddy) excursion, Fletcher managed to avoid hitting anything but was lucky to be able to wheelspin his way painfully slowly back onto tarmac with much time lost in the process. Out front in GT4 was Pointon in the #55 HHC Ginetta, but O’Brien in the #4 Tolman McLaren was always right with him. Tuck recovered well and was soon up to fourth in class behind his sister car.
The pitlane became very busy and the cars had to park at an angle, necessitating a push back and release and it was a minor miracle that there were no collisions between cars. The mechanic changing the rear left on the #77 Mercedes was in fact knocked over as one of the adjacent Jaguars was pushed back at an angle, but an apology appeared to be offered and the #77 was soon back in the fray.
Approaching the halfway point Tom Wood owned up to a mistake at Druids in the #61 GT4 Aston Martin. “I made a mistake at Druids and went into the wall, but as walls go it was quite a nice one and I was able to get it back out again! I pitted a lap earlier than planned so we could get the car checked.”
With the pitstops completed Adam retained Haigh’s lead in the #75 Aston Martin, but it was down to only 1.2 seconds from Keen in the #33 Lamborghini and Keen was on one of his customary charges, fearlessly leaning on drenched kerbs with the car somehow still looking absolutely planted. Turner was some 33 seconds back in the #99 Aston Martin, with Buurman’s #116 Mercedes 5 seconds down but reeling him in.
The duel was over just five laps later however when Keen, attempting to follow Adam past a Ginetta at Clay Hill, clipped the Ginetta with his right rear, it was light yet critical contact, ripping his wheel apart and necessitating a pitstop for a new wheel and tyre. Adam had a relative cruise to the flag as a result, given the 35 seconds that he suddenly found he had in hand.
With the 12 seconds additional pitstop time for Silver/Silver combinations of drivers, the original GT4 order was shaken up and Ben Barnicoat emerged in an unassailable lead in the #72 Track-Club McLaren, a car that despite a brilliant start from Balon hadn’t really featured in the lead group before the pitstops. Ben Barnicoat took over and drove very smoothly though to deliver the win.
“We managed to achieve the same result here at the season opener last year, and obviously it’s the best way to start. We actually thought there would be no chance of repeating it but here we are: we’ve done it again!” Balon said. “I like racing in the wet but the trick was staying out of trouble at the beginning, getting past a couple of cars early and then tagging along with some of the faster guys to give us a shot after the pitstops. It’s a big grid but the traffic wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The biggest issue was the windscreen: it was filthy by the end of the stint!”
Behind him the #42 BMW of Green, which had climbed to fourth in class with Tuck at the wheel) and Fagg’s #4 McLaren raced each other hard for the remainder of the race but took the chequered flag in that order. After the race the #42 BMW was handed a penalty for a too short pitstop which dropped them to seventh, promoting the #43 Century BMW to third and the #501 Balfe McLaren to fourth.
Keen rejoined with his new rear right rubber fourth in class, 8 seconds behind Buurman in the #116 Mercedes. Buurman was on a charge himself so Keen had to make do with fourth, and a no-doubt relieved Darren Turner just held off the charging Mercedes by a quarter of a second to take a somewhat distant second place. Kujala and Cocker made it a Barwell 4, 5, 6. The #7 Bentley then came home ahead of the #101 McLaren, Rob Bell surviving the late pressure from Maxime Martin’s #47 Aston Martin until a mistake from Martin saw him take to the grass and fall away behind.
The puncture cruelly robbed Barwell of a probable victory and it certainly robbed the decent (especially bearing in mind the weather) crowd of a dramatic finish. The race was surprisingly incident free though and it seemed that most teams had chosen to approach round 1 with some circumspect. Perhaps with race 2 later being abandoned that could be significant as the season unfolds, but in race 1 at least Jonny Adam and Flick Haigh didn’t put a foot wrong.
“Phil [Keen] was coming, and into Clay Hill there was a Ginetta that moved to the right into the corner, so I could get through and I knew he had come through, too,” said Adam. “It was only towards the end of the straight that I realised he had a puncture and was dropping back, but then I knew I had a big enough gap not to take any risks. The track was changing constantly and GT4 cars move onto and off the line, so you have to be careful.
“The fact I had that gap though was largely due to Flick’s first stint. She gained a lot of self-confidence knowing what she did with pole in the dry on Saturday so to translate that to the wet is great. She’s driving really well, calm and with confidence now and it’s just great to see. The Lamborghini is the one to watch in these conditions, it has good aero and a nice balance but our car did feel really good.”
