Wood Scott Racing – British GT Championship
Rounds Five and Six – Snetterton

Sunshine at Snetterton greeted the field for rounds 5 and 6 of the dailysportscar.com Cup and the #77 Wood Scott Racing Porsche was out to get more points on the board.

Race One on Saturday and it was Stuart to start.

The team had tested previously at Snetterton, with Stuart posting some very competitive times, but for whatever reason the pace just wasn’t in the Porsche at the start of the race. With a closely matched field traffic was a particular problem, but despite that Stuart drove a steady stint before the pit stop window opened and it was Steve Wood’s opportunity to do battle with the massed ranks of cup class players.

“He handed over the car in very good shape, but with the delays in traffic it left me with a rather lonely race. That can make it difficult to push on, but then Adam Wilcox in the (third placed) DRM Ferrari 360 pulled up closer behind me and I had a go at outrunning him. It worked too! – I managed to pull away from him, which was quite satisfying.”

The good news was that a fairly high rate of attrition meant that the #77 car had gradually climbed up the order: sometimes a steady and reliable pace pays dividends and at the chequered flag it was a fifth place, close enough to wave to the guys on the podium.

Sunday’s race would see Steve starting and very keen to ensure that Stuart had a 48th birthday to remember.

He immediately set about the Lotus Elise of Barry Whight and got by into turn one, before the nippy little Lotus slipped through to grab the place back into Russell later in the lap.

“The car was working well at last and I managed to latch on to the Damax Ferrari and Graeme Langford’s Porsche. We were all running together, very close, and I did them both under braking into the Esses. At that point I was only three car lengths off third place.”

Then it went a bit pear-shaped as, in Steve’s words “I made a bit of a boo boo and got spanked up the rear by Aaron (Scott) in the Morgan. The impact turned me around and onto the grass. There was muck all over the tyres and it took several laps to clean it off, then as I was coming in to hand over to Stuart I got tagged by the Tech 9 Porsche, which pushed me off the racing line and onto the muck and rubber pick-up."

The JWR team rapidly made the call to change the rear tyres while Stuart climbed aboard, but the car seemed to have suffered somewhat from Steve’s adventures.

“It just wasn’t pulling well at the top end at all and there seemed to be fumes in the cockpit,” said Stuart

It later emerged that the exhausts had been compressed in the incident with the Morgan, the symptons Stuart was describing being the obvious result.

Despite the difficulties though, birthday boy Stuart brought the car home strongly to post the second fifth place of the weekend for the team.

Points on the board then in both races which made a nice 48th birthday present for Stuart on Sunday.

Next time out it’s the fabulous Castle Combe circuit.