Richardson Racing made its return to racing in style in the Michelin Ginetta GT Supercup at Croft, with driver Andrew Richardson taking his second G50 class win of the season during Round Thirteen. The Grantham-based outfit missed the last rounds of the series at Oulton Park due to damage sustained at the meeting before at Thruxton.
Andrew was left to fly the flag alone at Croft, with younger sister Louise missing her second successive meeting due to the substantial damage her car received in the start-line accident at Thruxton. It was 19 year old Andrew's first visit to the North Yorkshire venue, meaning he sampled the track for the first time in Friday testing. He went on to take twelfth overall and fourth in class in Saturday's qualifying session.
The opening race saw Andrew start well and gain up some places; however these were lost when he had to take avoiding action at the hairpin when a rival lost their bonnet. He fought his way through to eleventh overall and fifth in the class at the finish. The second race began in damp but drying conditions, with Andrew gambling on slick tyres.
It proved to be the right choice as he quickly took the G50 class lead and ran within the top five overall, before finishing seventh. Unfortunately for Andrew, a clutch problem picked up in that race was unable to be fixed in time for the weekend's final race, meaning he had to sit it out.
Andrew said: “It's been an eventful weekend. I'd not been to Croft before but when I qualified fourth in class, I was hopeful of a good performance in the races. The first race was annoying as there was nothing I could do about Jake dropping his bonnet in front of me and I had no option but to go on the grass as I couldn't risk hitting it and damaging my tyres.
“I was praying for damp conditions for Sunday because those conditions really level the playing field and take away some of the advantage that other people may have because they have done more testing. I'd watched the touring car race before and could see there was a dry line so I told the guys I wanted to put slick tyres on and then it was a case of keeping the car on the road.
“Early in the race the clutch started to go and it meant I was having to use half throttle on the straights, but I pushed as hard as I could and it was great to get the win. Some of the bigger teams said we had no chance of being out for race three so the fact we got so close shows what a great job the team did and its just a shame that we didn't have another ten minutes.”
