Dumfries based Albatec Racing had a difficult weekend as they returned to the FIA World Rallycross Championship for the fourth round of the 2015 series held at Lydden Hill in Kent.
After an excellent start to their 2015 British Rallycross campaign which saw Team Principal Andy Scott guide his Peugeot 208 WRX to take two wins and a second place so far, the squads European Rallycross campaign kicked off in style at Mettet in Belgium where Frenchman Jerome Grosset-Janin won the first of five EuroRX rounds in 2015.
Hopes were high for the squads return to WorldRX where Scott was joined for the event by David Binks, who last drove for the team at Loheac in France in last years inaugural WorldRX Season. The draw for heat one put both drivers up against some of the championships best drivers and setting quick times soon became difficult.
After heat two at the end of the first day, Scott was in 20th place with Binks placed 23rd of the 30 Supercars entered. Heats three and four would prove to be just as difficult for the pair as times dropped over both heats. After the final heat, Binks was classified 23rd in the rankings with Scott 24th, ending the teams painful weekend.
Team Principal Andy Scott looked at the positives from the teams performance.
“When we went out for the first heat this morning, they’d watered the track so obviously the track got quicker for every heat after, so we were slightly disadvantaged. Equally the track was blocked for me in turn one in the second, with the coming together between Timur and Ollie, which cost me around five or six seconds. The combination of those two really dropped me out of it which again gave me race two in the last heat, and as everybody knows at Lydden the races get faster and faster.”
However, he was impressed with Bink’s performance
“David has done a really good job this weekend, considering he’s not been in a car since Lohéac. He’s put in some really respectable times but he’s been hampered by the same things really, it’s just the luck of the draw. It is a world championship and the competition is naturally fierce, it’s certainly not standing still, the level is rising all the time. We just haven’t been in the right place at the right time.”
David Binks was glad to be back in WorldRX but acknowledged the difficult weekend.
“It’s been difficult getting back into a car after eight months away, but I think we’ve performed well. We’ve had a tough weekend, but we’ve moved forward with speed each heat. It’s a very competitive series, almost every one of the cars out here is a potential world championship-winning car, and if you don’t get a good result in day one, then you end up drawn out in the early heats all the time, and as they wet the track before the first heat, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the races thereafter will get quicker and quicker. So it does slightly disadvantage those drawn in the early heats to be four or five seconds a race slower, although I don’t see how else they could do it.”
Albatec Racing now prepares for its next Rallycross events and to defend both of the championship leads it holds. The first events ahead are rounds four and five of the MSA Shannon Group British Rallycross Championship held at Mondello Park in Ireland where Scott will be looking to extend his lead. This double header is then followed seven days later by the second round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship held at the Estering in Germany, where Grosset-Janin will be looking for his second EuroRX victory whilst James Grint will get a second chance at trying to get into the Semi-Finals.
