P1 at Donington for Rackstraw
It was a mixed weekend at Donington, the first Carrera Cup GB meeting of the season. It started with Free Practice on Thursday going fairly ok, but problems with reigning Pro champion George Gamble’s car were evident in its handling. This continued into Saturday, where a poor qualifying saw him finish as P12. Andrew Rackstraw qualified in P4, which was a good run as the front half a dozen cars were literally hundredths of a second apart.
The First Race on Sunday saw an incident at Turn one where Century stablemate Henry Dawes received damage to his car that put him out of the day’s both races. The race continued behind a safety car for a while – then kicked off again. Andrew and George had been running P2 and P3, but George was still struggling with the handling of his car – he dropped to P6 – but then both the Rosland cars received 5-second penalties for track limits. So, with the time penalties Andrew moved down to 5th and George down to 10th. George explained even more to the engineers regarding the handling of his car, and they decided to change a few components – it was a big gamble (no pun intended) as there obviously couldn’t be a test drive before Race Two…
Race Two was at 13:40. As the 5-ball had been chosen for reverse grid, it meant Andrew would be going from Pole position as he had finished 5th in race 1. George was P12. A great start by both drivers saw Andrew keep the lead and George work his way swiftly to P5 after two cars collided at turn one again and had to retire. Andrew’s drive was excellent and held P1 for the whole 24-lap race, despite pressure from stable mate Angus Whiteside in P2, whilst due to the incident at turn one on start a gap had developed with the front four cars some 6 seconds ahead quite quickly, meaning once George got to P5 he could only manage to close the gap down to just under three seconds by the end of the race. So, it was a win for Andrew and an excellent P5 finish for George whose car was now handling as it should do. P1 and P5 in the second race was a great result, considering how the day had been up until then. Amazing work from the team!
Onwards to Snetterton in a few weeks!