Drayson Racing followed up their debut victory in the American Le Mans Series with a fourth place overall finish at an incident packed Grand Prix of Mosport.
The race was cut short after an incident with Jonny Cocker an a GTC Porsche brought out the red flags with 29 minutes remaining on the clock. The race would be restarted after a delay of an hour but the chequered flag would be waved on the following lap after officials determined it was unsafe to return to green flag conditions.
The accident was a result of contact between Cocker and the Porsche which would see the GTC competitor slam head-on with the wall, heavily damaging the the car. Thankfully for Drayson Racing the damage sustained from the accident was merely cosmetic to the left rear of the car.
“Difficult race for us.” admitted Cocker. “We proved again that we have fantastic pace. The car was just brilliant again. The Michelin tyres worked really well for us. They came into their own halfway through the stint and the car was really good. We had a few problems which meant we were a couple of laps down when I got in the car but I was still determined to push hard. We got fastest lap by quite a margin; that was good. We had an incident with one of the GTC cars; a bit of a misunderstanding between the two of us. It’s just unfortunate that the Porsche made contact with the barrier which damaged the barrier to the extent they had to red flag the race. Fortunately everyone is OK. We discussed it all and it’s all sorted now.”
Team owner/driver Paul Drayson told of his relief that no one was seriously injured in the race-ending accident. “Mosport is an unforgiving track” he said. “”e have seen that in practice and again today in the race. I am glad that both Jonny and Luke are unhurt after such a big shunt which is a tribute to the safety systems in these race cars today. Now we cross the Atlantic for the next stage in our 2010 campaign. We are very excited about returning to our home track and competing in the Intercontinental Cup – flying the flag for the independent teams against the factory entries.”
The 1000KM of Silverstone sees the final round of the Le Mans Series take place with the Drayson racing team entered to take place. The race also marks the first of three Intercontinental Le Mans Cup races in which Drayson Racing is the sole British and ALMS-based prototype team. The other two events in the ILMC will be the Petit Le Mans (and ALMS finale) on 2 October and a race at the Zhuhai circuit in China in November.
