Donington Park Sunday 6th October 2013
The British GT championship final round was the centre piece for this BRSCC organised 2 day meeting held on the 2.5 mile GP circuit. Following the demise of a normal British F3 championship in 2013 the support races on the GT package have been a little on the thin side,especially after an attempt to run a series for Duratec Formula Fords collapsed after only 1 round. Bolstering the timetable at Donington were 2 races for the Mazda MX5 Autumn Challenge and, following a successful race at the Superstars meeting, a hastily arranged HRDC Allstars race. As both these raced on the Saturday only however, Sunday meant only 6 races on the schedule with 3 for the Ginetta GT5 Challenge, 2 for the Volkswagen Cup and the 2 Hour British GT race.
6 races with a scheduled finish of 4.25pm. A glorious sunny day. A decent crowd on hand. What could possibly go wrong..........?
The first Ginetta race of the day was going well until Jake Giddings discovered that the grass on the exit of the Old Hairpin was still wet and a sizeable crash underneath the Spark Plug bought out the safety car. I'm not a fan of moving walls back but I hope that Donington alter this part of the circuit in the near future. There is no need for the bridge over the circuit at that point and the Spark Plug commentary point needs removing too.The tyre wall on the inside at the Old Hairpin has always been close to the track while over the years the run-off on the outside has increased. Hopefully with the Infield being redeveloped in that area this will be addressed.
Next action was the oddity that is the 10 minute GT warm-up session and then the day started to unravel! The first VW Cup race suffered a multi car shunt at Redgate on the first lap leading to a long safety car period and when racing resumed resumed it was red flagged after Phillip Morris needed medical attention after being hit in the passenger door after trying to recover from a spin at the Old Hairpin.
Following a long delay which ate into the lunch break and a total absence of a promised Supercar Parade the next action was the second Ginetta race. This lasted half a lap before Tudor Alexander suffered what was described by Ian Titchmarsh the commentator as an enormous set of rolls at Coppice.The red flags fluttered again and incredibly this race was abandoned altogether as organisers didn't want the restart to intrude on the live Motors TV coverage of the British GT race......
Even then the start of the GT race was 10 minutes later than scheduled so by 1.25pm The Spectator had seen barely a lap in anger and was looking for various high buildings and pieces of rope....My mood wasn't helped when, you guessed it, the safety car made an appearance 15 minutes into the GT race to recover David Ashburn's Porsche at Coppice. Thankfully this was the only interruption in 2 hours and the race was won by the Audi R8 of Mark Patterson/Matt Bell. The championship itself was claimed by Andrew Howard in his Aston Martin Vantage.
The second VW cup race neither suffered a safety car or red flag and The Spectator's mood was gradually improving! Interesting to note that ex British Superbike champion Tommy Hill was making his car racing debut in the VW Cup this weekend and despite being involved in the first race melee at Redgate he finished 13th in his second race.
Lets save the best till last then as the 3rd (or was it the 2nd) Ginetta race of the day came next. Lap 1 and yet another shunt at the Old Hairpin led to yet another safety car and then when racing resumed fluid must have been left on the track at the same point and cue another multi car shunt and more red flags...Eventually a 12 minute restart came and went, the race was won by George Gamble, but by this time I frankly didn't care any more!!
When you watch a lot of meetings, you are going to get some stinkers now and again but this was exceptionally poor in my opinion.There will be always be accidents and delays in any meeting but 2 weeks later I am still scratching my head over this one. Maybe it was just one of those freak set of circumstances that led to so many incidents, maybe it was the fact that it was the final race of the season so more was at stake but how we can lose a race out of only 6 scheduled is beyond me.
Admission was £10 with DPRAC discount and programme was £5
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