| The man can do no wrong. Mark Fullalove recovered from a
poor start to claim his sixth win of the season and a new lap record at
Silverstone on Sunday, ahead of early leader Hyla Breese and Spencer
Marsh.
As Fullalove struggled for traction off the line in his Carlube
entry, both Breese and Marsh - second and third on the grid respectively
- challenged for the lead into the first corner. It was Breese for
Nortel Networks who made the move stick into Copse, with Marsh forced to
slot in behind Fullalove, but there was nothing between the top three as
they headed the pack round the first lap.
Splitter
Breese held advantage over Fullalove for the first eight laps, but
there was never more than a second between the battling duo. Marsh, who
lost his front splitter on the opening lap, drove a great race in the
Anadin Ultra car, but just couldn't keep up with the leaders and would
take the flag in a distant third place overall.
Breese and Fullalove traded fastest lap after fastest lap in their
bid for overall honours, but it was Fullalove who seemed stronger as the
race progressed. Seeing his chance when Breese made a poor exit from
Luffield Corner, Fullalove drew alongside him onto the pit straight,
subsequently making a great overtaking manoeuvre into Copse Corner. The
canny Australian stuck with Fullalove over the remaining laps but the
newly-crowned 2001 Autobytel Lotus Champion never made a mistake,
finally taking the flag two seconds ahead of his rival.
Oops
Mark Cole lost a place at the start but had a fighting drive to bring
his Autobytel.co.uk car home in fourth place, after a race-long battle
with one of his rivals for second overall in the Championship, Jon Tee,
who finished fifth for Theramed. Tee had misread his pitboard and
successfully challenged Cole for position on what he thought was the
last lap - but was in fact the penultimate lap - and Cole promptly
returned the gesture to secure fourth position at the flag!
Sixth was Ian Ashley, who had been making ground on Tee in fifth
until he spun at Becketts Corner on lap ten - and from then on had a
fairly lonely race.
Autocar Man
Autocar Road Test Editor, Chris Harris (Bristol) finished seventh,
despite a spin following an ambitious challenge on newcomer Julian Rouse
in the Team Norfolk car at Abbey Corner.
Rounding out the top ten was Andy Cakebread who kept ahead of the
battle for honours in the LM Production class.
Simon Scuffham, polesitter for the LMP class, romped home to secure
his first class win of the year, and 11th overall, leaving all the
action to Darryl Davis and Mark Thomas in their pursuit of second in
class. Following a fantastic three-way scrap for position with American
Bill Binnie - who finished 12th overall - Davis finally took the flag
3/10ths of a second ahead of newly crowned LMP Champion, Thomas.
Nurburgring
The Championship moves to the Nurburgring in Germany for the
penultimate round next weekend (15/16 September), in support of the FIA
Sportscar Championship. The competition for second and third overall in
the Championship is unrelenting - with each of the main contenders
needing to beat their rivals in a straight fight over the remaining two
rounds.
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PistonHeads reader Simon Scuffham joined the fray at
Silverstone in the LM Production (roadgoing) class, and didn't have a
bad weekend at all!
Having had the worst year I could possibly imagine so far, I was
looking to get a decent result from the weekend, however, in prepping
the car on Tuesday, the engine was only on 3 cylinders – Ahhh! Not
again.
After a panic call to QED and some basic diagnostics, I shipped it
over to them to look at, they found a broken valve spring but no serious
damage (for once) and got it back together for Thursday PM.
Test Day
The Friday test day was somewhat frustrating, all the other runners
were on about the same pace as the last meeting, but I was some 3
seconds slower than my time from then, I was all at sea, I could not get
any grip. I knew the engine was down on power, but not enough to make
this sort of difference, I was starting to think the problem was me.
Qualifying was not until 4PM on Saturday, so I got to the circuit
early with the intention of checking everything. I completely dismantled
the suspension, checked all the joints, damper settings, spring
platforms and bolted it all back up. I then started on the throttle
linkage - the pedals are not ideal, when on the brakes, the throttle
pedal is some inch higher, making heal and toe almost impossible.
This all done, it was time to work on the other problem – the nut
behind the wheel!
Qualifying
Qualifying came and I started slowly to allow a gap in front on
myself, then came in to get the tyre pressures checked. Next lap out I
was immediately quicker with a 1:34.041, the next lap was a 1:33.301 –
within a whisker of my previous time of 1:33.225 set at the last
meeting's test. This done, I came back into the pits to check tyre temps
and others' times. I was some 1.5 sec’s faster than the nearest class
rival, so I decided not to tempt fate and sit out the rest of
qualifying!
I still did not know what the problem from Friday was, but at this
point I did not care anymore – class pole was good enough for me, and
3 LMGT runners behind me to boot.
I went home feeling a lot better than I did at the start of the day,
I had found the missing 3 sec’s and the car was still working!
Race Day
Sunday morning checked over the car (paranoia!), fuelled it up, and
then went walkabout to clear my head (those MG’s look really good!).
The race came round somewhat faster then I expected, so much so that
I has not even warmed the engine by the time we were sent out onto the
grid, the green flag lap would have to do. I started from 11th on the
grid on the left hand side. At the start everybody in front of me turned
right to get the inside line, the track ahead of me was empty – this
was too good an opportunity to miss, I made up 3 places before we got to
Copse, only to get tapped from the rear halfway round! I had to tip-toe
round the curbing losing two of the places I had gained, but still in
the main pack. As we headed for Abbey, I was able to sneak past one
putting me up to 9th, only to lose it again at Bridge. I managed to hang
on to the tail of this bunch for three more laps but then they started
to pull away (I assume that their tyres were warming up etc.). At this
point I could see nobody behind me, so I settled down to a safe pace to
reel off the rest of the race.
On about lap 8 I realised that a red car was gaining on me fast, I
could only think it was Mark Thomas making a miraculous recovery drive
and coming after my class lead! By lap 10 he was on my tail, we got to
Maggotts and I completely messed up, missed the braking, and ended up
taking in some grass! Past went the red car, at which point I realised
that it was not Mark but Andrew Cakebread, a GT runner I had passed on
the first lap – panic over!
After this I just reeled of the remaining laps (lapping Pat Thomas on
the way) to take the flag on lap 17.
I actually made it to the finish and won, for the first time this
year, the God of Motorsport had not crapped on me!
To say that I was somewhat pleased is an understatement, after the
year I was having, this is what I needed. I ended up some 25 sec’s
ahead of the next in class Daryl Davis & Mark Thomas. |
