Mechanical failure puts Michael out of race one
The first race of the weekend was scheduled to be the last event of the day during Saturday’s busy timetable. Despite looming grey clouds and strong winds, the weather remained dry for the duration of the race. With a good grid position, Michael was confident of progressing through the field with the podium in sight.
A bad start saw Michael drop several places from the grid as the lights went green, putting him behind slower cars and in the midst of the mid-field chaos.
“I had too many revs on the start and lit the tires up. By the time I had any traction, a pack of cars had already squeezed past”.
Michael had a lucky escape on the opening lap after nearly being collected by an out of control car at the Brooklands corner. The spinning Julien Draper was then collected by an unsighted driver which brought out the safety car at the end of lap two. After three laps behind the safety car, the race resumed with Michael struggling for pace.
“I had a vibration in the car during the safety car period that was getting progressively worse. I was struggling to keep up with the cars in front when the race resumed and was losing drive out of the corners”.
On lap seven, the Welch Motorsport car finally gave up the fight and retired with a broken differential due to a faulty oil pump. The failure occurred on the national straight, enabling Michael to limp back to the pitlane.
“It’s a disappointing result to start the weekend with but there’s two races left to go so we can still get a couple of strong results. The team has done a fantastic job preparing and setting the car up, the failure was just one of the unavoidable things”.
Race 1 Results:
01. Nathan FREKE – 21:00.685
02. Frank WRATHALL (+0.155)
03. Chris DITTMANN (+2.540)
04. Carl BREEZE (+2.844)
05. Tom SHARP (+3.048)
06. Rob AUSTIN (+7.027)
07. Fulvio MUSSI (+17.044)
08. Richard SYKES (+19.099)
09. Joachim RITTER (+22.191)
10. Paul SHEARD (+29.634)
11. Tony HUGHES (+34.953)
12. Ben ANDERSON (+38.544)
13. Neil HOUSTON (+52.625)
14. Colin WHITE (+1:05.414)
15. David KRAYEM (+1 lap)
16. Ken RATTENBURY (+1 lap)
Not Classified
DNF Benji HETHERINGTON
DNF Michael BROADHURST
DNF Ron JOHNSON
DNF Julien DRAPER
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