The racing gods though are a fickle breed and they served
up weather conditions which could best be described as changeable
for Knockhill Saturday’s race. Tyre choice was something of
a lottery on a wet but drying track and Stuart at the wheel,
was one of several runners making the wrong call of wets,
and it was inevitable that he would be one of the first to
pit.
Despite a still greasy surface off line, Steve blasted back
out into the race, pedal immediately to the metal - but the
blue car’s race was not destined to go the distance. With
just 15 minutes of the race to run, and the CBT backed car
steadily climbing the order, Steve exited the tricky Clark
Curve and ran slightly wide. The Porsche twitched and, despite
his best efforts, the back end snapped out: the initial slide
was caught but the car had already reached the point of no
return, the front end swiping the tyre barrier at Hislops.
It was a big impact and the track was strewn with bodywork
and clods of earth.
Steve was understandably shaken and was annoyed with the
incident. “It’s only my second ever accident on track and
I’m still not really sure how it happened.”
Neil and the rest of Team Eurotech did a fantastic job and
repaired the car overnight but they didn't have any of the
underbody ducting, which had been destroyed in the accident.
Torrential rain throughout the morning looked as if it would
help enormously - track temperatures would have been sufficiently
low not to have caused a problem - but the appearance of the
sun in the Fife sky was to prove disastrous, the car retiring
early on with predictable overheating problems.
Nick Adcock had his second weekend in the car at Thruxton
having deputised for Steve at the GT festival in Bahrain
last year. Thruxton can be hard on cars and drivers and
it ended up with being a weekend of problems with setups
and racing incidents ending with a crash with the Jones.
