Britcar Spa

It has been a difficult time for Apex Motorsport since that devastating air crash at the end of March, but the team has shown its mettle by continuing to compete in the FIA GT3 and Britcar championships despite its loss; and this fortitude was rewarded at Spa when the CBT XKR claimed third place overall in the four hour Britcar race – the first overall podium for Apex since it won Le Mans with Bentley in 2003.

Stuart Scott invited an old friend to join the Cambridge Business Travel car alongside himself and Chris Ryan - Mark Sumpter; who had facilitated Stuart’s entry into motorsport in 1995. Scott and Sumpter last raced together in 2003; on that occasion, also at Spa, in the GulfAir Racing VW Golf in the British GT Class of the 1000k race.

The Jaguar XKR GT3 is a completely different beast to the bijou, but very distinctive, Golf and Spa would afford it the opportunity to really stretch its legs; and right from the start of proceedings, it was competitive.

Free practice started on a wet Friday morning in the Ardennes and the car’s owner was first out. Having run as high as fifth fastest early on, the track began to dry as the conditions changed and with the car having dropped to seventh, Chris Ryan took over on slicks. The new rubber quickly yielded results and the CBT Jaguar ended the session with a third-fastest time of 2:34.878.

For the 45-minute qualifying session later that day, the team decided to give Mark Sumpter as much running as possible to get him comfortable in the car. So it was that Scott and Ryan did three laps each, leaving the rest of the running to the ‘newcomer’. Fifth on the grid, with 2:32.228, was very encouraging and became better still when the pole-setting Mosler of Kevin Riley and Ian Flux was sent to the back of the grid for an infringement; followed by the withdrawal of the second-placed Gallardo of Paul Hogarth and James Pickford after damage incurred in the Dutch Supercar Challenge race.

With the race not starting until Saturday evening and running into the dark, the Britcar runners had a lot of time on their hands; but this at least gave Apex an unhurried opportunity to check everything over on the car.

Chris Ryan had the honour of starting the race (in dry conditions) and ensured that he kept his starting position behind the Trackpower TVR Sagaris and the Topcats racing Mosler as the top three began to break away from the rest of the field.

After 50 minutes, a nicely toasted Chris Ryan handed over to Mark Sumpter and it was decided to reduce the planned stint-times to 40 minutes, due to the energy-sapping heat inside the car.

Despite initially falling back to fifth, Sumpter called on his considerable experience to quickly regain third, before Stuart Scott had his first taste of battle. His car’s performance delighted Scott and, despite losing a little ground during his 40 minutes, the Jaguar was still well in contention when he handed back to Sumpter.

The car was soon back up into third place, but rain was now beginning to fall. As ever at Spa, the length of the track meant that conditions were different at various points around the seven kilometre circuit and the team decided to watch how things panned out; not wanting to stop for tyres outside of a scheduled driver-change if it could be helped.

The leading TVR did stop to change for wets; but after discovering that the time advantage over the Jaguar was only two seconds a lap, Apex decided to keep its car out on slicks.

The track soon started to dry again and Sumpter finished a good day’s work by handing the car over to Scott in second place.

Stuart again kept the car in contention throughout his final stint and when Chris Ryan got in to finish the race, the CBT car was in a strong third; more significantly, it was now closing on the second-placed Team Kinfaun Porsche 997 at the rate of up to three seconds per lap.

The team calculated that the two cars would be together on track with two laps to go; but as Ryan changed down for Les Combes - braking from 180 mph - the car suddenly span. Fortunately, the Jaguar missed the gravel traps and was able to quickly resume; but all hope of catching the Porsche was gone with so little time remaining.

This was the only error of the entire meeting and, with the Jaguar being almost two minutes ahead of the fourth placed car, did not threaten the car’s road position.

But rather gallingly, the winning TVR Sagaris had been adjudged to have completed only 59 seconds of the compulsory 60 at one of its stops and was subsequently penalized 61 seconds. This meant that the Jaguar finished just 20 seconds from the lead – without the spin, who knows what the result would have been?

But this would in no way dampen the celebrations in the Apex/CBT camp. “The car ran absolutely beautifully and didn’t miss a beat,” said an understandably very happy Stuart Scott. “The crew was fantastic and the three of us all drove well.

“What’s better is that we played our Joker for this round, so we’ll get double points.”

Next up for the Jaguar is the Britcar meeting on the Brands Indy circuit on June 14. It remains to be seen how well the car will adapt to the tight turns of the Kent circuit, but its performance on the rapid Belgian track augers well for the Britcar 24 at Silverstone in September.