Top Ginetta Challenge team HHC Motorsport had a hectic start to its Total Quartz Ginetta GT5 Challenge campaign at Oulton Park on Easter Saturday.

The Harrogate-based team ran a brace of cars for William Burns and Richard Sykes but both drivers suffered drama at the start of qualifying. On a wet-but-drying track, Richard elected to be bold and run slick tyres in anticipation of the road drying out sufficiently to make them work well. Sadly, before he could get sufficient heat into them, he fell foul of the wet conditions and hit the tyre barriers. Team-mate William ground to a halt on his first lap with an alternator failure, which meant that both drivers would be forced to start at the rear of the grid.

William was unlucky to be squeezed off the road during a hectic first lap of race one and, as a result, was a retirement on the opening tour. Richard was able to keep out of trouble and carved his way through the field to grab ninth place at the flag.

Both drivers started race two at the rear of the grid and worked their way through traffic, with William bagging ninth in the 26-car field and Richard coming home 11th after 15 frantic minutes of racing.

For the longer 20-minute race, with a grid based on race two results, William and Richard started on rows five and six respectively. Richard was able to work his way through the pack better and took seventh place, his best result of the weekend, while William was again unlucky to spin whilst trying to gain a place and finished 12th.

HHC Motorsport’s Charlie Kemp said: Today has been very hard work with three races and needing to change the alternator on Will’s car. A legacy of the qualifying dramas was both drivers having to fight through the pack and that always creates headaches! What Will and Richard showed, though, was that they can race hard and overtake well and when they had a clear road ahead, that the HHC Motorsport cars have the pace to run at the front. We are felling very positive heading to Rockingham for the next rounds.”