Xero On Tour – 2004 – Silverstone GP – Rounds 11 And 12

Racing Luck - The Wrong Sort

With the Corvette restored to health after the bashings and thrashings of Oulton Park, pundits were already saying Silverstone was a circuit that would suit the Corvettes well. Engineer Jay perhaps summed it up better than anyone: “Last year we didn’t expect to do very well here, but we actually went really well – this year we are expected and expecting to do well so there is more pressure.”

It was disappointing for the team to find they weren’t as quick as 2003 in practice then, seventh on the timesheet with a 1:57.953. “We don’t have good speed through either of the speed-traps, but we should be faster than last year – I don’t understand it,” vexed a rather perplexed Peter Le Bas as he cast his eyes over the data.

There was not a great deal of time to make improvements in qualifying either. “I got an out-lap, a quick lap and then the red flags came out. The tyres weren’t even up to temperature either so I only had three laps when the session restarted and that time wasn’t very good,” was how Ricky Cole summed up the disjointed first qualifying session. His 1:59.745 would see Xero tenth for the first race on Sunday morning.

Minutes later and it was Peter Le Bas seeing what he could do, and with a 1:59.736 as his first effort it looked promising. “It started feeling really oversteery though, so to go faster I knew we had to do something. We had done a pretty drastic set-up change before so I pitted with five minutes to go and they knocked a few notches off the rear suspension because I had too much grip at the front and not enough at the back.” Team boss Dave Beecroft jokingly put the oversteer complaint down to Pete’s right foot when asked for a comment by the circuit’s pit lane reporter…..

Happier with the car, Pete improved to seventh with a 1:57.852 but neither qualifying performance suggested the Corvette had any advantage whatsoever around Silverstone, which was a real shame.

And then that was it for Saturday. What a strung out weekend this was proving to be – free practice on Friday morning, then nothing, two 15 minute qualifying sessions back to back on Saturday, then nothing and then – ouch – two hour long races on Sunday. So with the car still nicely in one piece, it was time to treat everyone to a bar meal and a couple of Guinesses, after watching the Le Mans Endurance Series race of course…

Some of the team stayed up to compare the qualities of Guiness to that of Belgium’s ‘finest’, and other important topics such as the sexual orientations suggested by certain cars were also discussed ad nauseum (are you admitting here that no one knew about the stripper performing for one French team? Ed.). The writer eventually decided to go and ‘sample the atmosphere at the LMES campsite’, found his tent, collapsed and slept like a baby.

On Sunday morning it was time to get ready for race one and PR activities churned into life, with helium balloon production being high on the agenda. Anyone passing by on a scooter or 4x4 would find a Xero balloon sneaked onto the handlebar or wing mirror, regardless of what team the vehicle actually belonged to!

Race 1
The Corvette churned into life a little later, with Ricky as starting driver, and it was quite a start too. “Jonathan Cocker seemed to get swamped at the start and everyone crowded round him. I found him right in front of me and he didn’t seem to be going anywhere so I made a move at Becketts.” The move on lap two stuck and Cocker, the championship favourite, then had several attempts at re-passing denied by Cole. Ricky’s focus switched from Cocker behind to the car ahead - the Niarchos-driven Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari. For several laps Niarchos blocked and weaved as Ricky looked here there and everywhere – even getting alongside on the outside of the twisty stadium corners.

This fight was costing them both time but not positions – both RSR TVRs had made mistakes and the JWR Porsche was in trouble, so Ricky already found himself in sixth place – if only he could make a move stick against the Ferrari… “I had to get past him, if I could I knew I could pull away and we’d be all right. So I tried to drive round the outside at Bridge – a bit ambitious but I decided that it was the best place. Until I ran out of track and onto the grass it was anyway, and then I spun.” Ricky made one mistake during his drive and it was under pressure and it was a gamble worth taking, as he was clearly quicker than a few of the cars ahead. Dave Beecroft was very impressed with Ricky’s drive and the admission that his attempt was perhaps not the best judged.

Back to square one and tenth position: the best tactic now was surely just to preserve the car and keep it in fine fettle for race two. The question was, could Pete keep it smooth and look after the car?

Pete drove a decent pace during his stint and managed to make up a couple of places on attrition, despite leaving the pitlane rather eagerly and incurring a drive-through penalty. “I could see Neil Cunningham pitting and stalled when I was pulling away. We were so close to the end of the pitlane that when we got it going again I just nailed it to get out of the way.”

It is unlikely that the penalty cost them a place in any event and it was a lowly eighth for the Corvette. “At least we have a really good car for race 2,” grinned Le Bas. The relief on the Xero engineers’ faces told a story…

Race 2
Just a few hours later it was Pete’s turn to start and as the field was unleashed, the Corvette was immediately being squeezed by the Mosler feigning left and right, but mostly right - and that is exactly where Pete was. He slipped back to ninth in front of the Embassy Corvette, took stock, then got on with the job ahead. The Corvette was starting to reel the Mosler back in again when oil flags came out and then the safety car and then rain, just to turn things really crazy.

The Corvettes did not look suited to the greasy conditions and fell back once racing resumed, losing out on pace to some of the nimbler dailysportscar Cup class cars and providing the impetus for an early driver and tyre change.

“It is so wet and slippy out there, we’re sliding all over the place but it’s so much fun hanging onto it. Its tricky too – wet here, dry there – really tricky. We had to do something about the tyres though, so Ricky is out on intermediates now,” said Pete after climbing out of the car.

It looked like a good choice as Ricky would be in the top trio of quickest cars on track for much of the remainder of the race. The problem was that the second safety car of the race picked up the Corvettes instead of the leader, released them late and re-started the race early. Both Corvettes lost nearly a lap as a result and to add insult to injury most of their rivals pitted during the safety car period, where there is less of a deficit.

“I don’t understand it,” fumed Cole. “We were told in the driver’s briefing quite clearly that the safety car would release cars until it picked up the leader, then let everyone catch up before they resumed racing – but they released us and went racing straight away.” It looked like that decision cost them both in the order of 1 minute 40 seconds, which they had no chance to make up in the last half of the race.

Instead the Corvettes were left to battle each other – Cunningham driving superbly on slicks whilst Ricky set some good lap times on his inters, despite a rapidly drying track. He was already gaining on everyone ahead apart from the leader, Cocker, who was also on intermediate tyres. With dark skies overhead it looked like there was a good chance of another downpour forcing everyone else into the pits, which would have helped to redress the balance of misfortune somewhat.

Unfortunately the rain held off and Neil Cunningham’s slick-shod charge got stronger, passing Ricky into Stowe with seven minutes to go. Hanging on around the lap Ricky made the most of a wet infield section and pushed ahead of the Embassy car to cross the line back up to eighth overall, but on the same lap Cunningham finally proved he had the right tyres by making his move stick down Hangar Straight and into Stowe.

With no answer, it was time to bring the car home to an artificially low ninth place, sixth in class.

“Ricky kept his head out there and drove brilliantly, the organisers totally lost their heads though,” summed up boss Dave Beecroft. Without the intrusive safety car obstruction, or had it even allowed the Corvettes chance to catch the tail of the field, realistically they would have been battling for second, third and fourth, with the Jones twin’s Porsche, in the closing stages of the race. As Ricky was lapping two, three and four seconds a lap faster than David Jones it wouldn’t have been much of a battle either.

It will not take much of a shift in fortune to see Xero on the podium at Thruxton in two weeks, because the car and the drivers have quite clearly got the pace.
Paul Slinger