Seven drivers from England headed for what could be arguably
called the best gas car circuit in the world, Lostallo, to contest the 2007
European championship.
The weather, organization and racing were
red hot. In the
end Collari won (again!) and top brit Mark Green was fourth overall. An
excellent result! Here is a brief account of how it all panned out.
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| Fantastic track, superb location, great
weather, could not have been better |
Superb organization and the massive track allowed 15 drivers
to practice together. So each driver got 50 Minutes from Monday to Thursday.
Even after a brief rain shower on Tuesday the organisers carried on late into
the night. The first job was to get 5 minutes on fuel. With such a long pit
lane doing a fuel stop in qualifying was never going to be an option.
By Thursday it was still not clear that the top runners had
the fuel consumption sorted and qualifying was looking to be very interesting.
 |
| The team looking almost respectable |
After the first two rounds there were clearly 3 divisions;
those that could do 13,14 and 15 laps respectively. Scott Nettleton and Andy
Mollet were doing all they could to break out of the 13-lap barrier but never
made it. Iain Milford put in a stunning last run to crack the 14-lap mark.
Richard Hicklin and Chris Heath were comfortable in the mid 14-lap pack.
Neil Diver put in one of his finest qualifying performances
to date, to smash into the 15 laps and qualify top Ninja driver. Neil was in a
direct semi-final place until the very last run when he got bumped down one
spot into the ¼ final.
Mark got his driving, fuel consumption and motor performance
almost spot on to qualify 8th overall just 1 second behind a top 4
place.
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| The BRCA team hard at work |
After never really getting it together in qualifying, Scott
was first up in the 1/512 final. After a terrible drive Scott got lucky and
managed to finish 3rd and bump up into the next final. Andy was not
so lucky in his final. As we know at this level there is no such thing as an
easy final and from pole Andy made a few mistakes and could never recover the
gap.
In the 1/256 final Scott officially earned the dunce cap.
After a brilliant drive from the back of the grid setting his fastest times of
the week and with all the Brits cheering him on, he managed to get up to 3rd.
Then on the last lap put it on the grass and ended up 4th. His
international pitman was not impressed!! In the same final, Iain led away from pole but spun it on
the first lap. With everyone else on a blistering pace Iain tried as hard as he
could and fished on the same lap as 3rd but in 7th. It
was very close.
In the 1/64 final, Richard and Chris did battle. Richard
drove a brilliant race to win and bump up to the Sunday. Chris was fast enough
to bump up but a few problems intervened and he finished 6th.
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| Richard and Pete preparing for another
final |
Richard woke up with his race face on and even with a stop
go penalty blasted through the pack to win the 1/32 final. In the 1/16 final Richard once again was on
a mission but just missed out on another bump up finish in 4th just
2 seconds behind 3rd.
Neil lined up in pole for his ¼ final. To say this was going
to be tough was an understatement. In 2nd
was his team leader Rick V, in 6th was Adrien Bertin, multiple
European champion, and the rest were just as fast. Neil led from the start with Rick V chasing him hard. After
establishing a tiny gap Neil let Rick past but a few laps later with the pack
chasing hard, Neil got a fraction wide coming down the straight and went off.
Neil chased as hard as he could but ended out of the top 3.
With Matt on the fuel gun, Mark dominated his semi final
with some of his best driving and flawless pit work to win his semi final by a
lap and qualify 9th for the final.
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| The finalists 7 Italians, 1 German, 1
Dutch and Mark from the UK |
Pole man Michael Salven led off from the start closely
followed by Picco. Mark got a good start from 9th but in the first
two laps got hit by Tironi coming back on the track. Mark had to come into the
pits to fix his body shell and lost 9 seconds. With everyone lapping within a
few tenths of each other Mark had an almost an impossible job to catch the
pack.
Slowly but surely over the next 45 minutes Mark shaved a few
tenths here and there and with Matt gaining him around .5 of a second per fuel
stop, Mark clawed his way back up to 4th overall just behind Tironi
in 3rd, Picco in 2nd and Collari the winner. An
absolutely excellent performance by the team that did the Brit’s proud.
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| Collari wins again |
Collari won because he did not change tires. He only just
beat Picco by a second but you had the feeling this was very carefully
calculated. From my perspective Collari
won the race earlier this year. The thing is this; between Monday and Thursday
when we are still trying to run in engines, set up the chassis, figure out how
to order lunch and get 5 minutes of run time, Collari already knows all this
and is already fast enough. So he
starts to figure how he is going to win.
From his position that his car and engines are already well
sorted after doing thousands of laps around the circuit, he concentrates out
how to make the car work even better.
The result is that after 50 minutes per day for 4 days just trying to
find that last 1% he is able to race for 45 minutes at the same pace as the
rest but more efficiently. He did the
same thing in Messina to win the last world championship.
In this context this puts Mark’s and Neil performances into
perspective. Mark finished just 20 seconds behind Collari after 45 minutes and
after 9 seconds of an extra pit stop and a tyre change. Neil Qualified 5 seconds behind Collari!
| Mark Green |
A++ |
8th |
4th |
Absolutely fantastic result. Has everything he needs to be
world champion; Needs to race at top level every other weekend. |
| Neil Diver |
A+ |
19th |
31st |
Extraordinary qualifying performance. Unlucky in the final |
| Richard Hicklin |
B+ |
75th |
53rd |
Most enthusiastic member of the class. Very clean racing
moved him up 22 places. |
| Chris Heath |
B |
79th |
83rd |
Learnt a lot, just needs time |
| Scott Nettleton |
B |
118th |
111th |
No question, dunce of the week. |
| Iain Milford |
B |
104th |
115th |
Impressive qualifying. Needs more experience. Had a lot of
fun but suffers from 1970’s flashbacks. |
| Andy Mollet |
B+ |
117th |
125th |
Did well for his first European event. It did not meet his
own high expectations but I’m sure on reflection will capitalise on what he
learnt and will be back for more. |
*Q = Qualifying position **F = Final Position
Find of the week;
Did you know that San Bernardino has it’s own time machine? If you are
ever out late on a Saturday night after everything else has closed, be sure to
look for the glass doors with a glimmer of light. Open them to reveal a full on 1970’s disco with glitter ball,
fake zebra décor, John Travolta and even Swiss Tony (from the fast show, not
Tony that lives in Switzerland). It was
quite simply fantastic….
Impression of the week: Make sure you ask Matt – the
gun – Baker to do his impression of JP limbering up for you. He may even bring
out a work out video.
Most valuable team member; No question, Matt wins
hands down. Not only was he the best pit man but by far the funniest and
hardest working.
Worst Pitman; Solaroli’ pit man. Shook so much in the
final he dumped the fuel gun several times over the pits. The local tyre place can change tires on my
Audi faster than he could do on an 8th car.
Spare a thought. David Qvrivishvili and his mate turned up from
Georgia. They had not entered and no idea what to expect or how things worked,
they have never even raced before. Respect! Sander was looking for pit space for
them and asked us to give them a space, of course we did, I helped them as their
team manager, the Hicklin's jumped in and helped get the car going and they were
off. At the very first qualifying they got a stop and go for bad refuelling. I
had explained in my best Georgian how this works but it seems it did not get
through. After taking a minute to do his first lap he finally made it to the
straight and stopped on the straight to do his stop and go... From then on
things improved slightly.
David finally managed 10 laps in qualifying and 25 laps in his final. A
great effort for someone who had never raced before and I like to think the BRCA
team made their first foray out of Georgia a little easier.
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| Our new mate from Georgia |
It goes with out saying that all the drivers thank all the
pitmen, girl friends, wives and organizers for making the week possible and
keeping us sane. All the results
are online at
http://vs189141.vserver.de/reports/ch/mrtm/IR_27072007/EFRAV8T/index.html