A Very Mixed Weekend at Brands Hatch
A Very Mixed Weekend at Brands Hatch
As the second race at Donington had been cancelled two weeks ago due to bad weather Round 2 was completed this last weekend on Saturday at Brands Hatch.
A very good drive by George Gamble saw him finish P2 after hounding the leader the whole race. Stable teammate Whiteside held him off to win to much applause from everyone. Gamble was content with the P2 finish. These results were not involved in the Saturday qualifying or race orders for Sunday – Rounds 3 and 4 of the series.
Qualifying on Saturday for the Sunday races had looked good with George Gamble in P1 until around 3 laps left of the quali session, which saw a stream of cars on flying laps all come through the line one after the other to bump gamble down to P7 for the race. Will Burns had a respectable P11 for the grid, being just 0.3 seconds behind P1 in quali. The field was very tight indeed and qualifying is always a bit of a lottery, with flying laps often aborted due to someone in front deciding they will abort there as not a good lap. Frustrating, but it’s always exciting.
Onto Sunday, where the first race, Round 3, was immediately red-flagged after a major incident involving Century stablemate Angus Whiteside, who found himself tumbling and somersaulting out of Druids hairpin after contact with another car resulting in the rotating tyres mounting each other which put him airborne. After a few tumbles and a badly damaged car he emerged uninjured. A testament to the quality of thee Porsche GT3 cup cars. But it was a very scary event. Will Burns was also unlucky as just prior to the Whiteside acrobatic show he had a front wheel struck by another car that broke his steering rod and he went off track into the tyre wall. So frustrating but that is racing. Everyone was back to the grid and a wait to get the cars clear and Angus Whiteside off for a check up, which was all ok. The race restart saw George Gamble being the only Rosland car having to deal with a badly slipping clutch. This was a big surprise as the clutch was new only three races ago. The clutch was constantly slipping and got hotter and hotter through the race, with Gamble managing to manage to still get two places up before, on the final lap, with the clutch having gotten so hot it melted the crank sensor and the engine failed – literally just 200 metres from the finish line. A DNF for Gamble too. That’s racing.
Round 4 was later in the afternoon. Unfortunately, Will Burns’ car was not able to be fixed after its collision with the tyre wall in the first race so just George Gamble was on the grid for Rosland Gold Racing. After the engineers’ swift clutch change between races there was a hope of moving up from a starting place of P13, which was behind the last pro driver finisher in the first race due to Gamble’s DNF in the first race. A good start saw a some places gained, which continued through the race until eventually a P4 finish for George Gamble was celebrated as an excellent drive when taking into consideration the P13 start and it was the Indy circuit, which is a short and tight circuit.
With very mixed results and feelings over the weekend at Brands it is a 4 week break until Rounds 5 & 6 at Thruxton circuit.
