GruppeM – Brands Hatch – October 3rd

There was that “end-of-term” feeling to Sunday at Brands Hatch. The last ever TVR Tuscan Challenge race, a driver by the name of Piquet claiming the F3 title once again, and “job done” for GruppeM Racing. It would have been ideal for Jonathan Cocker and Tim Sugden to go out on a high, with another win, but that wasn’t a top priority to a team that was shipping out its Porsche to Dubai later in the day. The weather tried to put a damper on things, but the forecast of gales and torrential rain never materialised, and a modest crowd had much to entertain them as they huddled beneath their umbrellas and mini-tents.

In the GruppeM awning there was plenty of activity, but no pressure. With the car in fine fettle after a trouble-free win on Saturday, the team was more concerned with crating up all their kit for air-freighting to the Middle East, than tinkering with the RSR. The drivers didn’t turn up much before lunchtime, and then it was a just a matter of the straightforward saunter over to the grid for the start of the last race of the British GT season. Tim Sugden was strapped in for the opening stint, but the first signs of what would become a serious inconvenience for both GruppeM drivers was already evident - as he took up his position behind Andrew Kirkaldy’s Ferrari on the sloping track. He could see the red car ahead of him, but the side and rear perspex was already showing signs of the misting that would plague the car throughout the sixty-minute race. He dismissed a final offer from the team to wipe them clear as the last hooter sounded and, with the door closed, watched as the mists descended.

Outside the car the morning’s rain may have eased to a light drizzle, but all other signs suggested it was more likely to grow worse through the afternoon, not better. The two Scuderia Ecosse Ferraris had opted for intermediate tyres, but Sugden had insisted on full wets. It was a wise decision that could, with hindsight, have paid dividends, but he wasn’t to know then that merely seeing the track ahead of him would soon prove his greatest challenge.

The field was offered two green-flag laps to introduce the changed conditions – it had been relatively dry in practice, qualifying and Saturday’s race – and then it was straight into the racing. As they thundered across the startline, the two Ferraris heading the pack, the rooster tails flew up into the air. Hitting the front was going to be critical in these opening laps. As soon as the leaders came through to lap the slower cars it would be spray all the way, so a clear lead now could mean valuable seconds later. Mullen tucked in alongside Kirkaldy, blocking Tim Sugden’s hoped-for dive for second, and the three red cars were clear of the rest even before Druids.

Under the circumstances it was a remarkably clean start, and even the gravel trap round Paddock Hill had no visitors. “It was pretty much as you’d expect,” said Sugden. “I got a bit jumped and then blocked, so couldn’t move ahead of Mullen as I’d like to have done. From then on I decided to err on the side of caution, take it careful and kept out of trouble. I just wanted to look after the car and get a good finish.” He hung back from the sparring Scuderia Ecosse 360s, possibly in the hope that they’d tangle somewhere, but still pulled well clear of Cunningham, at that time running strongly in fourth.

Tim Mullen was clearly intent on making up for the #34’s poor showing in Saturday’s race, and harried Kirkaldy mercilessly over the opening laps. His 50.967 on lap three, when he so nearly got ahead of his team-mate, would stand as the fastest lap of the race, but also one of his last. Pushing perhaps a tad too hard, he went off in a big way at Paddock Hill bend early into the eighth lap. It was not a pretty sight, but it gave Sugden an easy route through to second. By then Kirkaldy was four seconds ahead of Sugden, but if the gap was clear, Sugden’s windscreen was not. “I couldn’t see much at all,” he insisted. “The screen was fogging up very badly, and had been right from the start. In any normal race I’d have pushed a bit harder, but I didn’t want to take any risks today. It would have been a great shame to bring the car back on a truck!” Discretion and valour being what they are, he persevered. The full-wet tyre choice was reassuring, and the Porsche was getting plenty more grip than the Ferrari, as Mullen had proved, but Tim could only squint through the mist and hope for the best.

Somewhere behind Sugden, hidden by the spray, there was a great scrap going on for fourth between Cunningham’s Corvette, Adam Jones in the Tech 9 Porsche, and an on-form Steve Brady in the Ultima. They were followed by Mark Sumpter, who’d benefited from Dan Eagling’s spin into the gravel aboard the Peninsula TVR. During the course of the next half-dozen laps, it would be Steve Brady who’d emerge from the gloom, eventually slipping clear of the rest to start an impressive charge to the front.

By contrast, Andrew Kirkaldy was clearly struggling at the helm of the Ferrari, slipping alarmingly at times as the car’s inters scrabbled for grip. Under normal circumstances he’d have been easy prey for Tim Sugden, but the GruppeM racer was in no position to respond, although he was still circulating within a tenth or so of Kirkaldy’s best. That, however, was nowhere near as good as Brady’s, who overtook Cunningham down Cooper straight and rounded Clearways in third. Sugden, warned of the Ultima’s approach, responded as best he could, and took a second out of Kirkaldy on the next lap, but it was only a matter of time before he had the diminutive blue and yellow Ultima on his tail. “I was a bit surprised by the Ultima, to be honest,” admitted Sugden later. “It was actually very, very good today. It makes you wonder where it’s been all year!” Where it was a few moments later was filling up the road ahead of him, as Brady hared off in pursuit of Kirkaldy, but would he be able to catch and pass the Ferrari before the Safety Car was deployed? The Monaro had gone off for the second time, this time backwards into the gravel at Druids, and a full-course yellow looked inevitable.

For three uncertain laps the racing continued, everyone keeping a wary eye out for the flashing yellow lights and marshals’ signals. Right at the end of the seventeenth lap, Steve Brady swept into the lead around Surtees, and was clear across the top of Paddock, confirming a fantastic performance by the driver, and no mean feat for the frequently troubled Ultima. At about the same time the SC boards started to spring up all around the circuit to herald the arrival of the Audi pace car, except it wasn’t actually on track yet. The red estate sat on the exit ramp off Cooper Straight, waiting for the leader to come through, but someone had omitted to tell the driver – who must have been watching the duel for the lead over the previous two or three laps – that Steve Brady was now his man.

Overtaking now ‘verboten’, Brady slowed almost to a standstill as he came through Graham Hill Bend, willing the pace car to pull out in front and thereby pick up the rightful leader. To his disbelief, he was beckoned through with frantic gestures, and then watched helplessly as the safety car promptly pulled out behind him and picked up Kirkaldy! The bewildered spectators were then treated to the bizarre situation of the pace car parading Kirkaldy and Sugden round the track for three laps, with the race leader right at the back. Thankfully sense was restored on lap 22 when the entire field was waved through, so that Brady could adopt his rightful place at the head of the train.

The race was now drawing perilously close to that moment when the driver change window opens and the pitstops begin. Combining this element of confusion with an ongoing Safety Car period could have been the recipe for unbounded chaos, but luckily racing resumed with seconds to spare. Kirkaldy was the first to pit, at the end of lap 24, but Sugden and others stayed out for one more tour, handing the lead to Adam Sharpe in the Cup class-leading #76, a position he’d retain for ten laps until his late stop to hand over to Dominic Lesniewski. Only then was it clear that Alan Bonner, inheriting the Ultima from Steve Brady, was still leading from Jonathan Cocker, who’d moved into second during another exemplary driver change. Richard Hay was third in the Embassy Corvette. The early stop by Kirkaldy had not favoured Nathan Kinch, who now ran a distant fifth, behind Steve Hyde in the Eclipse TVR.

Initially Jonathan Cocker was taking great chunks out of Bonner’s lead, which rapidly dwindled to less than two seconds, but his early pace was a false dawn. Before long Jonathan had to ease off because, like Tim before him, his view of the track ahead became more and more obscure. He could still maintain a speed that kept him clear of the chasing pack, but he couldn’t see enough to challenge the Ultima. “The car was OK when I went out, because the team had cleared the screen during the pitstop, but after a lap or so it was just as bad again. The Ultima was throwing up a lot of spray, which didn’t help. As soon as I got close the mist seemed to get thicker, so I had to drop back. That cleared it a little, but it was so frustrating! There was just one spot that I could see through, but I had to lean over to the side to use it. There was ventilation, no fan, nothing. It was impossible!”

Suffering no such handicap was Nathan Kinch, who had suddenly become the man with a mission. His Ferrari now re-shod with more appropriate footwear, he’d become the fastest on track, dispensing with the #60 TVR with small ceremony at Druids. He then elbowed his way past Richard Hay with equal disdain through Clarke Curve on lap 42, tipping the Corvette into a spin that sent it crunching painfully into the wall. “I thought he’d at least wait until we came out onto the straight,” said a crestfallen Hay, saddened by the premature ending of another strong run from the Embassy squad.

Kinch’s next target was young Jonathan Cocker, who had no wish to be given similar treatment, but the Scot would have to wait a while yet. Mark Cole had lost control of the Tech 9 GT3-RS at Druids, and buried the back end in the gravel. He’d not be moving again under his own steam, so the Safety Car was called out once again on lap 45. This placed Cocker right on Bonner’s tail, with the small comfort of a solitary tail-ender between himself and Kinch. Racing resumed at the start of the fifty-first lap, and Kinch was already up with the leaders as they rounded Paddock Hill. Cocker offered scant resistance, and Kinch was ahead and into second within two laps. “I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes and I was taking it as easy as I could. I’d been given strict instructions by the team, and it would have been ridiculous to fight for the position. Nathan took a big lunge, but I didn’t make it difficult for him. With the car flying out for Dubai at seven this evening I wasn’t going to take any risks, so I let hit him through – there was no point in doing anything else.”

Less than seven minutes remained when Kinch came upon Bonner at the foot of Graham Hill Bend. They were side-by-side through Cooper Straight, but the Ferrari had the edge, and was through into the lead as they rounded Surtees. In theory Cocker was close enough to watch this unfold, except that his screen was too fogged to let him see much at all. Alan Bonner never gave up, and threw down his best lap of the day in his efforts to keep in touch, but Kinch was away and clear, rounding off the season with another Ferrari victory. Bonner’s second place at the flag was the Ultima’s best result of the year, and third for Cocker made it fourteen podiums out of sixteen races.

“We’ve had a fantastic season, and I would have liked to have finished it off with another win,” said a clearly dissatisfied Jonathan Cocker. “It is disappointing, especially because I knew we could have won this one. The car felt fantastic, as it always does in the wet, and I know it sounds a silly excuse, but when it’s almost impossible to see where you’re going there’s not a lot you can do.” Even the race-hardened Tim Sugden looked less than happy. “Yeah, there you go, we came third,” he shrugged. “The main thing was to get to the end in one piece. Just look at the state of Tim Mullen’s car! Nobody would have thanked us for doing something like that!”

Like everyone at GruppeM, Tim seemed to be feeling the fact that the team’s British season was now over, but it has been an excellent run. “I have to say,” said a beaming Kenny Chen, “it’s been a great year for us. At the beginning, everyone said we’d have a hard time. It has been the strongest British GT Championship for years, and everyone is out here to win, but we had a good team, a strong driver line-up, and we all worked together. There’s nothing else I could have asked for. I’m very proud of this team. They’re so good at everything they do. They’ve worked hard and in a good atmosphere. This team will take us much further in the future, believe me.” It’s not clear exactly where that is, long term, but their immediate concern is flying out to Dubai for this week’s FIA GT race, and then Zhuhai a few weeks later. As for 2005, watch this space.