Britcar Endurance/Sports & Touring Race Report – Snetterton 9th August
Driving the FF Corse Ferrari 458 Challenge solo, owing to David Mason’s absence due to a family issue, Calum Lockie won the first of the two Britcar Endurance Championship races around the Snetterton 300 circuit.
Driving the Class 2 entered #26 Lockie was able to keep ahead of Nathan Freke’s Class 1 Ginetta G55 GT3 both before and after the mid-race pitstops, eventually pulling out to win by five seconds at the end of 47 laps. Lockie himself was at the front for all but half a dozen of the total.
Starting from fourth on the grid he moved up to second on the opening lap, passing Darren Nelson in the Carnell Racing entered Ferrari and the Neil Garner Motorsport Mosler, still bearing the battle scars of the Oulton Park accident. Meanwhile the early laps were led by James Abbott, driving the RAW Motorsport Radical RXC coupe from pole position. However, after galloping out to a lead of over seven seconds in the first five laps gearbox problems took them out of contention early.
The bright yellow machine returned to the track later in the race but, only completing 17 laps was consigned to count of those teams not classified. That group also included the MacG Racing Ultima, limited to just five laps by a driveshaft failure and Mike Millard’s Rapier LMPX.
After Abbott had pulled the Radical out of the lead Millard had taken possession of third place behind Messrs Lockie and Freke. It was a position he held throughout the rest of the first half of the race, that despite a spin across the Esses that lost him more than 30 seconds to the lead and dropped him almost into the lap of Nelson in fourth place. Millard would be the only other man to lead a lap during the race, his late pitstop allowing him to inherit the lead as first Freke, then Lockie came in. Sadly another off-track moment would be the last action Millard and the Rapier would see in the race.
Needless to say with his retirement third place overall passed to the Carnell Racing Ferrari – now overseen by FF Corse. In the hands of Nigel Greensall for the second half of the race the Class 1 entry was on the very end of the lead lap to the extent that Lockie partly credited his ability to pull away from Freke late on to the opportunity to pick up a slipstream in the wake of the other Ferrari on the grid.
“I knew Nigel was in the Class 1 car and he was driving slowly to preserve the car,” said Lockie. “I managed to catch him at the Bentley Straight and here on the Senna Straight which gave me a bit of a tow which really helped keep me clear of Nathan.”
Greensall completed the overall podium, finishing second among the Class 1 runners. A lap behind the lead trio, third in the premier class (and fourth overall) went to Mosler men Javier Morcillo and Manuel Cintrano despite the fact that Morcillo – at the wheel during the second half of the race – set the fastest lap of the race (1:50.930).
Guillaume Gruchet was two laps further back in collecting the points for second in Class 2 a lap ahead of the best of the three Class 3 entrants headed by the Intersport pairing of Kevin Clarke and Anna Walewska, who came from behind in the second half of the race Clarke passing both of the Ginetta G55 that provided the opposition in the class.
While the Intersport BMW V8 GT4 fell away in the first half of the race there was predictably little to choose between the two G55, the Century Motorsport Buckler car – shared by Stephen Fresle and Zoe Wenham – ahead of the Jensen Motorsport example driven by Jensen Lunn and Alasdair Lindsay, their Chevron GR8 another casualty of a damaging Oulton outing.
Ginetta-wise the order remained the same, though Clarke weaved the BMW up the order to take the class win, a lap ahead of the Fresle and Wenham driven car which had built up a big enough gap by the end of a race to absorb a five second penalty for exceeding track limits with time to spare to Jensen’s #29 which set the fastest lap in class.
Author – James Broomhead
