Javier Morcillo and Manuel Cintrano will be celebrating tonight their fifth victory of the season in the Britcar Endurance Championship. Neither expected to take a win after the sizzling pace of the Pete Storey and James Fletcher driven Wolf CN was made apparent in the first session of the day but problems for the CN Prototype knocked the pair out of the action and freed Morcillo up to go for the top spot.
The butcher’s bill took a hefty toll early on. Nathan Freke dropped out on the first lap, the victim of a failed repair to a damaged oil line. Mike Millard fell by the wayside after an hour of action, closely followed by the Wolf which had until that point dominated the race. It was a puncture which did for the Storey/Fletcher pairing in the end. The small tyres on the Wolf delaminated quickly and the car became stranded with extensive bodywork damage at Stowe Corner. The flailing rubber also damaged an oil tank.
That left the Mosler of Neil Garner Motorsport with Javier at the wheel to run an uncontested 20 minutes to the flag. After the 100% classification rate in the first race, only one class 1 machine made it to the finish.
Calum Lockie finished a distant second place in the FF Corse Ferrari to keep his title hopes alive into the finale at Donington Park in November. The 1:02.501 gap to the Mosler was one of the larger gaps in the field but only the two championship protagonists were on the lead lap at the close of play. Guillaume Gruchet’s Porsche from Newbridge Motorsport took second place in class, third overall.
Third in class 2 went to Charlie Hollings and Peter Gbedemah. Gbedemah started the car, struggling from the off and losing a lap long before the half an hour mark. The Ferrari 430 Challenge ended the race four laps down, just ahead of the Zest Racecar Engineering SEAT Leon, the last classified runner.
The Britcar Sports and Touring Car Championship victory was claimed by the BMW M3 of Mike Moss and Tom Howard who finished ahead of the class 3 winning Ginetta of Zoe Wenham and Stephen Fresle. The Century Motorsport G55 was the sole survivor from the class after the early retirement of Intersport’s BMW E92 M3 in the hands of Anna Walewska. Kevin Clarke didn’t get a chance to drive the car which succumbed to electrical problems which had plagued the car throughout the meeting.
Lifetime Racing took second in the Sports and Touring class thanks to Black and Anderson, ahead of James MacIntyre-Ure’s BMW. SEAT’s took eighth to tenth places thank to Hayes and Thompson’s #79, the Track Torque entry of Jarvis and Brown and the Mark and Peter Cunningham driven #53.
The series reaches it’s climax at Donington Park in a single day finale on 1st November with an in to the night race. Chances for an FF Corse victory for Lockie, who expects to be re-joined by his currently injured team mate David Mason, are slim on a circuit which favours the Mosler but Morcillo isn’t eager to commit on his chances. After falling out of contention in the dying races of two consecutive seasons now, the Mosler crew are hoping for third time lucky.
