Reigning champions Mason-Lockie return for 2015
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The 2015 MSA British Dunlop Endurance Championship kicks off in just 6 weeks at Silverstone National, with two 90 minute races on the 28th of March.
The grids are starting to look excellent, with new and previous competitors returning for the new season. Amongst which we are pleased to announce the Championship winning duo of Mason-Lockie are returning for 2015.
They will once again be campaigning with the dependable Class 2 Ferrari 458GTC of David Mason OBE, the very same car that brought them to victory in the 2014 Britcar Endurance Championship. It all came down to the last lap of the last round at Donington Park National Circuit at night, after the season long battle with the Spanish duo of Morcillo-Cintrano in the class 1 Mosler, Mason-Lockie took the championship by a single point.
We managed to get a few words with Calum Lockie about his return to Britcar “It is fantastic and exciting to be back. To have won the championship against a much faster Class 1 car wasn’t something we hadn’t even dared to imagine at the start of the season. We will do our best and give our everything, but it will be a tall order to retain the title.” In addition “The cup is excellent, one of the best and certainly the biggest I have won. The only problem is I don’t get to keep it!”
Lockie has enjoyed a triumphant race career from winning the British GT Championship to wins in Group C and Historic Grand Prix cars. He is also well known in endurance racing, competing in no fewer than sixteen 24 hour races including Le Mans, Daytona and Nurburgring. He also has four Britcar Championship titles under his belt, there remains very little Calum has not had success in.
With a stacked 2015 season ahead Lockie is not only racing the Ferrari but; racing a 1938 Maserati GP car at Goodwood Revival, a Jaguar XK120 in the Heritage Series, a marvellously rare Tojeiro Jaguar and the 1981 Spa 24hr winning Mazda RX-7 at Goodwood. With around 20-30 races, he says “is there such a thing as too much?”
David Mason was also kind enough to provide us with some of his thoughts and feelings, “I am looking forward tremendously to the new season, particularly as last year’s co-champion I have the coveted number “1” on the car. It was such a close run thing to win the overall championship with 1 point over the Mosler that it really was a dramatic finish to a roller coaster season”.
David started racing single seaters during the 1960’s in Formula Junior, Formula Two and sports cars. He said that “it was always unfinished business when I retired all those years ago. They were the killer years and I retired when no fewer than 11 of my friends and competitors had been lost, such were the extreme dangers of motor racing at that time”. He made his return to the sport around 6 years ago with some casual track days, after that David made the decision to renew his licence and has progressed to where he is now, holding a championship title. “Winning the Britcar Championship was just surreal. Stirling agreed that he cannot think of anybody who similarly retired 50 years ago and then returned to win a very competitive and serious championship!!”
“I was of course extremely fortunate to have such an experienced and gifted co-driver in Calum Lockie and I kid myself not, that without him the result would have been very different. Calum always said that we would both make contributions that count at various points of the season and mine came in the last race at Donington at the end of the championship.” The 458 suffered power steering failure during Lockies stint in the final round, opinion had it that the car should retire the race. David however decided to press on despite being in recovery from a broken shoulder; “I lugged the car around for 45 minutes making a point of finishing the race. The car weighed a ton and it was pretty dicey to say the least, but finish I did and the result was that we secured 1 point for finishing. Calum was right, every little helps.”
His final words “We are both really excited about this season and are committed to trying to win the double, we cannot wait!”
The vastly experienced and professional FF Corse will once again be running the Ferrari for the pair, Team Principle, Anthony Cheshire says “We are really pleased to be defending the Championship again this year with David & Calum in a Ferrari 458 Challenge GTC. Last year was amazing and to have won the Championship by a solitary point at the last round was testament to the perseverance of the both the drivers and the team. The car is currently going through a major winter rebuild in the workshop and will be ready to start testing in a few weeks. We know this year is going to be tougher than ever and it will be difficult to repeat last year’s achievements, but everyone at FF Corse is really up for the challenge and looking forward to it.”
