Tuesday 24th June 2003

GT: TVR 1 & 2 at Combe

Works cars enjoy success just one week after Le Mans

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Works TVR drivers Michael Caine and Richard Hay won at Castle Combe last weekend with team mates Richard Stanton and Rob Barff following through in second place.

The sixth round of the 2003 British GT Championship at Castle Combe proved to be one of the most confusing to date. A long safety car period was terminated by a red flag after Graeme Mundy's T400R came off and got wedged into the armco (he was unhurt).

The race was restarted with some sort of aggregate timing thing going on which left everyone in the large crowd in a state of confusion. Martin Short rejoined the race in his Mosler a lap down from the leading cars and was even shown the chequered flag first, adding to the confusion. He did in fact finish 3rd.

The early stages of the race proved very exciting though. The lead Moslers were pursued by the De Walt TVRs, the Eclipse TVR, Peninsula TVR and the CDL TVR. It was one hell of a sight.

Whilst Short managed to bring home his Mosler in third the Balfe Mosler suffered damage early in the race when it came together with the Rollcentre car and was forced to retire. Not happy!

GT Cup

In the GT Cup category there was a straightforward win for Pearce and Griffin as regular rival Neil Cunningham (sharing this weekend with Paula Cook) retired the Richard Thorne Morgan Aero 8. “It was a bit of a messy race,” said Griffin. “When I went out for my run I didn’t know exactly where we were so I just pushed as hard as I could and put in consistent times.”

Team mates Nick Staveley and Steve Moore were second while father-and-son duo Marc and Patrick Charlton came home in third in their Elise. “We didn’t expect this at all – we couldn’t be more blown away!” said a delighted Marc before pledging to return for a future race.

Link: Results

[daver]

Shame about the Golf retiring. Bit of a hoot watching it with an F40 trailing it it's wake!

Pop Quiz:

The DeWalt T400s have yellow lights because:
a) They show up better
b) They match the cars' colour scheme
c) "We've been to Le Mans!"

[jeremyc]

daver said:

Pop Quiz: The DeWalt T400s have yellow lights because: a) They show up better b) They match the cars' colour scheme c) "We've been to Le Mans!"

Could it be that one has yellow lights and the other white so they can be told apart?

[Ahonen]

Can I vote for none of the above? It's because of the LM rules. FIA N-GT cars are the same.

[hansgerd]

Correct, it's because of the LM rules. BTW, congratulations for the rather good result.
Good to see the No 91 car beeing used that effective on the track after it was pushed out of LM by the Welter car just a week before.

>> Edited by hansgerd on Tuesday 24th June 16:13

[kevinday]

Good result indeed.

Can anybody tell me what happened at Le Mans, I was on airplanes during the period the race was on.

[hansgerd]

The no 91 car was pushed off into the armco near the Porsche curves by one of the cars of Welter Racing at only one hour after the start. I don't know which one it was but he received a stop go penalty for that (should have been a stop shoot penalty instead). Anyway, the right rear was damaged quite severely on impact so that Richard Stanton couldn't move the car. It was reported that some members of the crew rushed out to help but there was less than little they could do. The car was abandoned later.

[kevinday]

Thanks Hansgerd, what about the second car?

[d_drinks]

kevinday said:

Thanks Hansgerd, what about the second car?

depending on which source you listen to it was either a gearbox or diff problem occured just passed midnight

[hansgerd]

The no 92 car was slowly creaping up the position sheet into 6th place in class until a strange noise from the differential forced it into the pits at around 10:00 on Saturday evening. It took them half an hour to change the differential and the car went out again in 10th place. However, that didn't help and at around midnight the car retired with the same symptoms. From then on I drowned my frustration at the Bar Tertre Rouge which will be brought down soon (not as a consequence of me having a beer there I must add). On Sunday, there was the rumour that PW said something along the line "We still have an outstanding bill at LM…". To their defence it must be said that the broken part is not a TVR part but bought in. So, watch this space in 11.5 months. Or better still, go to LM and watch it yourself.

Edited to ask: Darren, where do you have the gearbox news from ? The broken diff was the official reason for the retirement or wasn't it ?

>> Edited by hansgerd on Wednesday 25th June 14:17

[kevinday]

Thanks again guys!

[kartman24]

i thought i read somewhere(might be autosport) that the car went out with a propshaft failure?

[barter]

kartman24 said:

i thought i read somewhere(might be autosport) that the car went out with a propshaft failure?

The engineers came down to our campsite after the race and confirmed your thoughts kartman. Propshaft (or driveshaft) failed. Not the Diff. Michael Caine couldn't get at it to try and bog it to get back to the pits. The marshalls, I believe, were being EXTRA helpful but to no avail.