With practice days completed, the pit-crew at full strength and the car in brand new livery, the team was well prepared for the Britcar 500 6 hour endurance race at Silverstone on October 3rd 2009. Additional sponsorship and Vicki Butler-Henderson joining the driving team alongside Ash and Owen meant that both the car and the team got lots of pre-race attention.
Vicki commenced driving at 4:00pm with the first 2 hour stint. She had an outstanding start; moving up five places in the first lap and then settling to a very consistent and competitive drive without incident until late in her session when the rain started. Fortunately it was only a quick shower and she soon settled back in to her 2m17sec pace again until the 6:00pm change over.
Ash followed Vicki into the car with the light beginning to fade and the temperature dropping rapidly. He too settled quickly to a very competitive pace. Unfortunately that didn’t last. As the light failed and darkness took over the rain came, and it came in style. So into the pits for a tyre change onto wets. After that there was no real drama until the Mustang incident! At this point the team were battling for Class 3 honours with the nearest rivals, a Honda Civic. They were just in the lead but needed two more pit stops against SICL's one. Victory was very likely.
The details of the Mustang incident were debated at length, but the in-car video showed what really happened. Following a line of other cars, coming to a left hander on the racing line, Ash was in front of the Mustang and, at the appropriate point, executed a perfect left turn into the apex of the corner...only to find the Mustang had crept a 1/3rd of the way down the car – on the inside! Contact was made and Ash ended up spinning off and getting buried in the gravel trap. It caused almost a 4 minute delay whilst the tow truck bailed Ash out of the gravel. The time delay in the gravel was bad enough, but the spin also caused a puncture which meant a pit stop for tyre change and even more delay.
Owen went out for his session and put in a fantastic performance trying to make up for lost time. Although without incident, he wasn’t able to claw back the deficit and he finished, at the end of 6 hours of full-on racing, in second place for Class 3.
It was a superb performance by the whole team and the trophy for second place, awarded at the presentations, was greeted by probably the loudest cheer of the night.