Qualifying on the day before the race was hampered by gear trouble and it soon became clear that a complete gearbox replacement was required (ouch!) . The team worked throughout the night – just what you want before a 24 hour race - but with a new gearbox we qualified and finally the car was ready and it looked spectacular.
The race day weather was 29 degrees and the crowd swelled to see the largest ever attendance to a Britcar race. When the race started Rob Cullum was posting consistently fast times with his fastest lap at 2:23. However, after lap 5 the car lost power and root cause wasn't obvious but Rob worked around it. Rick took over after two hours and was also posting regular 2:32 to 2:35. Ash took over as dusk fell and he too was Mr Consistency; really finding his rhythm and moving up to 14th place overall and fifth in class until his last lap before scheduled change when he hit the pit-wall after Club with huge force. Everyone was worried but soon realised he was OK, however, the car wasn't! It took 40 minutes to recover to the pit garage and at first sight most people thought that was it. The team though had other ideas!
The hive-mind of the pit crew took over and they started re-building: both left hand corners, fitted new bumpers, spoilers, drive shafts, hubs, uprights, fuel pump, replaced electrical – In 3 hours the car was race-ready again – a phenomenal effort! At 00:30 the car re-entered the race and Owen started the catch-up with gusto.
The night was, thankfully, less eventful with all drivers taking turn to move the team steadily back up the field. There was a nagging concern as some lack of power but that didn’t hamper progress. Then the gremlins came again: as dawn broke so did the new gearbox; the drivers couldn’t get high gears and that was it – race over!!!
The Britcar 24 is a brutal test of the car and the team. This year the car was found wanting but certainly not the team. Well done to all the pit-crew, drivers and the Ginetta team who helped enormously. A big thank you to all those who came along to support – there will always be next year.