Group 1 Bluebell, Group 2 Red C
Bluebell
Having qualified 24th we expected to make up a few places and Matt managed to overtake 3 cars on the start. He continued to make his way through the field until becoming held up by a Porsche 911 who was clearly determined that NO ONE was going to pass him. Bluebell was significantly quicker out of the corners but every time Matt went to come along side the Porsche driver cut straight across causing Matt to have to back off sharply, finally coming out of clearways onto the start/finish straight Matt was passing on the right hand side when the Porsche again swerved sharply across. This time there was nowhere for Matt to go other than the grass and then the wall, despite this the driver just came straight across until he hit the MGB, dangerous and stupid! On the driver change Matt told Marky that the car was running well but that there was a lot of play in the steering. Marky went straight out to a safety car which allowed the cars behind home to catch up but made a good restart and started to hunt down the cars ahead and despite the steering issue which became progressively worse throughout his stint, managed to put in the fastest lap of the race and made up still more places to finish 11th which considering where we started was a good result.
Red C
Mike was in a good starting position to make up places but disaster struck when a Marcos two rows ahead on the grid failed to start. The most dangerous place to be behind a non starting car on a race grid is not right behind but a couple of rows back. If you look at footage of start line crashes it’s usually the cars a couple of rows back who come to grief due to the speed that they have reached by the time they come upon the stricken car and the fact that there is usually no where to go at that point.
Mike had little chance to react and no way to avoid the obstruction and struck the rear of the Marcos and was then hit by Chris Blewett in his Lotus 7, fortunately all the drivers were fine but they were all checked over by the circuit medics at the scene. Obviously the race was stopped until the three cars could be recovered. Back at the paddock we had a quick look at the damage before loading the cars up for the journey home.
