Promising practice and qualifying times in the first weekend of the Renault UK Clio Cup at Brands Hatch were long left forgotten as Brett Lidsey in his MRM Racing Clio lay upside down after contact at the Druids hairpin.
In qualifying his time was only 0.4 seconds away from the top four and a twelth place start was his reward for the race on Saturday, not that he was to enjoy too much of the first race.
Contact on the first lap out of Druids flipped the Clio creating extensive damage and quite the headache for his team who knew they had quite the uphill struggle to get the car repaired for race two on the Sunday.
Working late into the night, MRM Racing managed to get the car ready for the second race which was shown live on ITV4.
Starting twelth in the very wet second race, the 26 year old from Kent had a less eventful first lap than in the first race, managing to even reach the top ten by the end of the second lap.
Brett was promoted to ninth after James Colburn retired on lap five, but pressure from cars behind dropped him all the way back down to thirteenth. This is where he finished at the end of the nineteen lap race.
But the day was to get worse when the five-second penalty he recieved during the race for ‘track limits’ infringements meant that in the final result he had finished fifteenth and only got one point instead of three.
Speaking of his first race roll, Lidsey explained, “Going into the first race I got a good start, got up alongside [Michael] Epps and then he got shunted left down Paddock Hill which meant I had to drop back behind Zak Fulk.
“Going into Druids he [Fulk] lost the back end and collected it back up, but as he collected it I was hit and the next thing I knew I was on my roof.”
Despite the awful weekend at his home track, Brett remains positive, “We’ll be at Thruxton on Thursday for the official test, so we’ll get that out of the way and then it’s on to Donington.
“We’ll be ready for that and hopefully all the bad omens will be out of the way this weekend. It’s such a shame we’ve had such bad luck at my home track!”
