British GT – Rockingham – Qualifying Report
”We’re Cockledy Doodle Doo”

GTO Class

That was the expression Shaun Balfe used after Qualifying, a session in which he ended up over a second and a half quicker than the field. “We’re flat out. We’ve got a very good datum point for each circuit, and the ideal set-up is never a million miles away.”

This team’s plan is obviously to win all the remaining races, and let the rest – Rollcentre and Eclipse – sort themselves out.

So Eclipse’s John Griffiths was quite right – the red and white Mosler did set a 1:36. John’s TVR ended up a good third, with 35 kg of steel bolted to the floor of the T400R. Piers Johnson set the time, with Shane Lynch happy not to go out after spending 150 minutes in the car on Friday.

Between them sat Colin Blower’s Ultima, which had been delayed on the track in Jay Shepherd’s hands when the master switch played up. Both Shepherd and Blower had real trouble finding a clear lap, so there’s the potential for better than a 1:38.5 from this car – but as it’s a GT class entry, it will have to stop for two minutes in the race. “We’ve got to stop for fuel anyway,” said Blower, “so it seems a little unnecessary to penalise us again.”

Martin Short was fourth fastest – second to fourth being very close indeed. The CDL and Peninsula TVRs were either side of the Ultima of Brady and Scott, neither TVR going any quicker than this morning. The blue Ultima did though, but Steven Brady had to switch it off when the oil pump belt broke. The team were hopping that he’d switched it off quickly enough. Brady was “envious of the extra two inches of rubber that Colin’s car has on the back.” Two inches of rubber or a two minute pitstop….

With the Eagling Mantis stationary all afternoon while the team attended Dan’s sister’s wedding, the Xero Corvette was the eighth car on the GTO part of the grid. Peter Le Bas was going quicker and quicker, but the gearbox needed more attention after the session – and of course an amusing incident befell the Irishman. The car’s mirrors are fitted with a sticker saying “objects may be closer than they apparently seem.” And lo and behold, it – the mirror – was, as Le Bas touched a marker post and the mirror flew through the open window and hit him in the helmet. He was also coping with the simultaneous problem of the onboard extinguisher having just gone off. It could only happen to Peter Le Bas.

Cup Class

In the morning session, 1.8 seconds had separated the two Tech 9 Porsches. By the end of qualifying, that gap had shrunk to half a second.”I don't think I could have gone any quicker today. We had a little bit of understeer and we're carrying 50kg (ballast), but we had a good base set-up. I just concentrated on preserving the tyres, as we'll be starting the race on the same set,” was Patrick Pearce's summing up of his stint in #76. So where had the time come from for #77? “I don't really know,” confessed Tom Shrimpton, who had set the time. “I knew that I could brake a lot later into a few corners (Deene, Brook and Gretton), so that was probably it,” he continued.

Thus it was that Phil Hindley's team once more dominated the front row of the Cup grid for Sunday's race. As expected, the Morgans were to provide the main challenge to the GruppeM GT3s, although the Richard Thorne Aero 8's first couple of laps suggested otherwise, the car circulating very slowly and hinting at a major problem. Keith Ahlers took advantage of this to lay down some fast laps. Within fifteen minutes, however, Neil Cunningham had shaken out the gremlins and bettered his morning time, moving into third in the process. Ultimately, he was able to squeeze a 1:44.907 out of the Morgan – almost a second faster than Team Aero, but 1.1 seconds back from the second placed Porsche.

The remaining five runners were separated by just 1.6 seconds at the close and this suggests that a few good scraps could develop during the 75 minute race. However, it remains to be seen whether this will be a five-way or a four-way scrap. With about six minutes of qualifying remaining, Alun Edwards hit the armco hard in his ISL Motorsport Mantis. “We made some changes to the set-up after this morning and the car was much faster. Unfortunately, coming through Gracelands the car was going faster and I was going too fast! The car was twitchy at the back, which is how I like it, but I got it a bit sideways out of the corner. I'd just about got it back when I got two wheels on the grass and that threw me across the track and into the armco. Another metre and I'd have got away with it,” explained Alun, with commendable candour. The car was badly damaged at the front and participation in the race depends largely on the state of the chassis.

All the Cup runners improved on their warm-up times, with the Atlanta Motorsport Clio finding some four seconds and a place.

Patrick Pearce is looking forward to starting the race in front of 35,000 spectators. Was he sandbagging, or is that really as fast as the #76 car can go? It's down to Tom Shrimpton and Liz Halliday to find out!