Britcar Brands Hatch
Stuart Scott arrived at Brands Hatch still glowing from CBT/Apex’s excellent Spa outing (and in second place in the championship points, having played the team’s Joker in Belgium), but with realistic expectations of what the Jaguar XKR GT3 could achieve in the claustrophobic environment that is the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit.
The sixth round of the Britcar championship was to take place on the same weekend as the Le Mans 24 Hours, which meant that Mark Sumpter would be unavailable. The car’s third driver at Spa was racing his Porsche 962C in the Le Mans Legends race and, at around the same time that the Britcar qualifying session was ending, was taking the plaudits of the crowd from the famous French podium, having finished in second place.
With the race having been lengthened from two hours to three at short notice, Stuart Scott felt that a third driver would be justified and flicked open his contacts book. A chat with Phil Quaife (who had raced the Jaguar in the opening FIA GT3 races at Silverstone) was initially unpromising, with the Porsche Supercup driver telling Scott that he was going to France to watch the 24 Hours; but the opportunity to race the XKR again proved too much of a lure and he cancelled his existing plans.
The car’s owner was the only one of the trio to test on the Thursday afternoon, but was very pleased with the session and was lapping the short track at around the 50s bracket.
Chris Ryan and Phil Quaife arrived on Friday for more testing and again progress was encouraging. But things began to go awry on Saturday morning.
The plan for the half-hour qualifying session was for Stuart and Chris to go first and then give Phil a full 15 minutes at the end of the session; and things were progressing well, with Quaife up to sixth with five minutes remaining. But suddenly the car returned to the pits with a big chunk of nothingness occupying the space previously occupied by the rear wing.
It transpired that a Marcos had spun on track and collected the Jaguar’s left rear quarter; the Marcos’ wing hitting the lighter, carbon-fibre wing of the XKR and causing the latter to disintegrate. With no further running being possible, the Jaguar slipped to eighth by the end of the session; but the question was now whether it would be possible to race at all.
No spare wing had been brought to Kent, so the team asked the organisers if the car could run without it. This request was denied on the grounds that it formed part of the tail-gate and was thus a homologated part.
With less than four hours to go before the start, a trip to the team’s base in Buckingham was out of the question, and with nobody working there anyway that day, it was time to think outside of the box.
Team Co-ordinator Zoe Copas was shopping in Oxford when she got the call from Stuart, but she responded immediately and drove to the lock-up, collected the required part and set off for the circuit; arriving outside the Thistle Hotel at the moment that the grid moved off for the formation lap.
Thanks to Zoe’s sterling efforts, just five minutes later, the wing was fitted and the car could join in; but with the Indy Circuit being just 1.2 miles long, this meant that they were already three laps behind the leaders. It was now a case of seeing what could be achieved over the three hours.
Chris Ryan was behind the wheel for the first stint and despite the starting deficit was already up to tenth place (of 23 cars) by the end of the first hour thanks to some very consistent lap times. Phil Quaife was in next and, as expected, increased the car’s pace almost immediately. Unfortunately for the local boy, a lengthy safety car period stymied further progress; but, alas, the car’s woes weren’t yet over.
About five minutes before Stuart Scott was due to take over, the car was pulled off at the bottom of Graham Hill Bend after the oil pressure disappeared; Quaife doing the sensible thing and turning off the engine. The car was recovered back to the pits, where it was discovered that the oil pump belt had come off.
But instead of calling it a day, the decision was made to carry on and try and get a classified finish and also to salvage as many championship points as possible. Thus, Scott took the car back out and completed the final forty minutes. But despite being 25 laps down, the driver was not cruising round; instead setting times that were often as fast as any car on track.
16th place (and last classified finisher) was scant reward for the team’s efforts - “All that effort for nothing,” being Chris Ryan’s immediate reaction – but the 11 points that the race yielded kept the team in third place in the championship, whereas a DNF would have resulted in a drop to seventh.
Stuart Scott, moreover, was his usual positive self as he reflected on a challenging weekend; “What it proves is that the Apex lads (and lasses) are not quitters; and considering what has happened today, to get any result is an achievement.
“Despite not being suited to the circuit, the car proved its pace today and we’re still third in the championship, which is exciting.”
But for two instances of misfortune, the result could have been very different; but the CBT/Apex team knows that this is part and parcel of racing. Next up is the three hour race at Silverstone in July; a race that for the Jaguar and for many of its competitors will essentially be a rehearsal for the big one – the Britcar 24 in September.
