It was a near-faultless run from #61 that took Moore and Strandberg achingly close to victory, only to finish third after dramas in the closing minutes of the race. Moore inherited the lead on lap 1 and his main likely challengers in the form of Oz Yusuf in the ISSY Lotus and Jamie Chadwick in the #407 Aston Martin were out of contention relatively early on.
Chadwick came together with Oz Yusuf in the Melbourne hairpin on the first lap, breaking a rear toe-link on the Lotus which cost two laps to fix. Yusuf was still very upset after the race: “Jamie Chadwick hit me at the hairpin up the back. I’m really not happy about it because she has already won her championship, I was on pole and fighting for mine, which she knew. If you don’t even know where to start braking for a hairpin, then should you really be a champion? She span me out and broke something in the car and that was it.
We’ve really had to fight with our hearts and souls all year, we’ve had everything thrown at us: weight penalties, more weight penalties, ride height and on top of all that me and Gavan weigh 95kg each anyway. On a level playing field we’d see who would have won this championship. We have done the best we could even despite that heavy car, which is a real handful and takes hours to set up in the wet as a result, but I do wonder what the point is when the balance of performance has destroyed us and some cars are being left completely alone. To me that doesn’t seem fair.”
The Aston seemed untroubled but with 20 minutes gone, whilst running in second place, Chadwick turned in as Marco Attard’s BMW tried to lap her on the inside at the Melbourne hairpin and the two made a substantial contact and the front right suspension and steering were badly deranged. The Beechdean Aston Martin was too badly damaged to make it back to the pits.
The invitation class #42 Porsche Cayman ran well in the top three in the hands of Henry Hassid but when Adam Christodoulou took over things were clearly not right. “Heat soak during the pitstop pretty much killed the brakes so we decided it was safer to retire it and take a look at what has happened and review the components to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Over-hasty pitstops also resulted in penalties that put paid to a good run from the #50 Optimum Ginetta and probably cost series returnees Ian Stinton and Nathan Freke a win in the #73 Century Motorsport Ginetta.
Ian Stinton had been finding pace one lap at a time and was beginning to figure towards the end of his stint. “I was still learning the car and the biggest problem really was that I had qualified out of position. It was a bunfight to get through the cars, especially with the GT3s coming through at the same time. Slowly I started working my way through and I was getting quicker and quicker until the times were good. My goal was to be two seconds off Nathan [Freke] and I was nearly there. We were 0.2 seconds too short in our pitstop and without the penalty or with another 10 minutes added on to the race we’d have won, so I have to be happy with this great result for the team.” Mr Tomlinson had better make sure that his new orders line is open early tomorrow morning.
A brilliant fightback from Freke did however see them come back to take an excellent second place.
Mike Robinson took over the #50 Ginetta over from the lead (but effectively fourth in class given the earlier stoppers). “We broke the pitstop limit a little so we got a penalty.” Robinson had emerged from the stop only a second off the leading #61 but had a spin out of the Melbourne hairpin and had already been passed by the #73 Ginetta, #62 Aston Martin and #43 Ginetta by the time he came to serve the 1.5 second hold penalty so wouldn’t feature in the front group again. “The ISSY car hit me even though he was laps down, I even wanted to let him go a few times but he wouldn’t come through so in the end I just got on with it and then he hit me, so I wasn’t happy about that. 2nd in the championship in our first season though is good and we have made a lot of changes this weekend that seem to have given us a bit of a step-up. We have some good experience and ideas already for next season. We would have needed one more place to win the Pro-Am in the end.”
The real drama was brewing for the final five minutes of the race with the #62 Academy Aston Martin really wound up and gaining on the leader. Its driver, Daniel Lloyd, had certainly been gifted a few places due to the problems faced by others but he also despatched several cars in-between including an audacious move around the outside of Blomstedt’s #43 Ginetta at Redgate.
He took the lead with a similarly bold move into the Melbourne hairpin with just five minutes to go.
Strandberg didn’t give the place that they had held for the last 55 minutes up easily to his sister car, he tried to get back up the inside for the next left hander. He delayed his braking too late though and ran across the grass, pushing wide and into Lloyd’s car, damaging the front right corner of his own car and letting a no-doubt relieved Lloyd romp away to the chequered flag.
Strandberg’s front-right tyre was rubbing and bits of the wheel-arch liner started to break free over the start line. Freke sensed another scalp and took it next time through the Melbourne loop.
James Nash got to within 0.2 seconds of elevating his #53 Stratton Motorsport UltraTek Lotus Evora onto the final step of the podium after a very impressive final half hour. It was not to be and with a nudge onto the grass from a GT3 car down the Craner Curves on his final lap, he considered himself lucky to regain the tarmac and come home fourth behind #61. “With 30 minutes to go my tyres were going off so I needed to take a couple of cool down laps to bring them back in. I could really push for the last 25 minutes which was the key part of the race. I was chasing Nathan [Freke] for third and watching him in his battle for second. Unfortunately an Aston, I think the Eurotunnel one, hit me on the Craner Curves and I was off the track heading towards the wall. I thought that was going to be the end of the race but I kept it together and we missed out on a podium by a few seconds. It would have been nice to give Hills and UltraTek a big high to end the season on, rather than just a high!”
Oz Yusuf/ ISSY Racing’s Gavan Kershaw and Oz Yusuf still managed to take the Pro Am title in GT4, the #50 crew missing out on that trophy by a single finishing position.
Paul Slinger
