ANOTHER CAPACITY GRID FOR TGP AT SILVERSTONE…DAYTON VICTORIOUS AFTER POOR START…FERRARI LEADS THE CHAMPIONSHIP AS TGP TAKES A SUMMER BREAK…
The Silverstone International Trophy for the FIA Thoroughbred Grand Prix World Championship supported by Minichamps Grand Prix Legends with Power by Cosworth provided an on-track highlight of a very successful inaugural Silverstone Classic meeting and gave the crowd a taste of F1 from the glory days for the first time since taking the support race slot at the 2000 British Grand Prix.
28 drivers signed-on for the TGP race on Friday morning, several of them with cars in different series; some of them, unwisely in one or two cases, ran the same car in different events. John Crowson was one of these and once again his James Watt Automotive prepared Ensign N177 was left looking bent following an accident in the Friday practice for a different race. It ruled him out of both events for the weekend and continued his miserable season.
The rest of the TGP grid was a good-looking selection of cars if not drivers. Ryan Delane, last heard in TGP at Monza 2004, returned to battle his father and Class A regular, John Delane in Tyrrell chassis 002 and 001 respectively. Father out qualified son by four places.
In Class B, John Bosch was delayed in getting his Ferrari 312 T3 on track when his mechanics missed a flight from Italy with some electrical components needed to get the car going but soon made up for lost time once the qualifying started on Saturday. Given that the Barron-Connor Racing team do not have a spare gearbox and have been using the same ratios on every circuit so far this season, Bosch’s consistent pace is proof – as if we needed it – of his quality behind the wheel. However, with the return of Martin Stretton and the Tyrrell P34, Bosch’s dominance of the class was to come under threat on the track if not in the points (Stretton is not registered as an FIA competitor). The Tyrrell qualified fourth overall with the Ferrari eighth. Behind them, Peter Wunsch put his Wolf 15th on the grid but, like fellow Class B racer Crowson, damaged the car taking part in a different event and did not start. That left Tony Smith (Williams FW06) - with a terrifying representation of his head painted onto his crash helmet – to chase Alain de Wagter (Surtees TS16) with David Coplowe (Surtees TS19) and Keiichi Murakami (Lotus 72-5) behind.
Class D’s flat-bottomed guys were lead by Steve Hartley’s Arrows A6 through qualifying. Returning Champion, Rodrigo Gallego returned having had the car repaired following damage sustained in a road accident that his transporter was involved in on the way the previous round at the Lausitzring. His qualifying times showed a commitment to making up for lost seat-time and he put the Minardi 11th on the grid but was some way back from Hartley. Terry Sayles’s Osella FA1 was third in class ahead of Alistair Morrison who lost a clutch during qualifying and started just one place from the back of the grid.
Up front though, the battle was on between the Williams’ of Duncan Dayton, Joaquin Folch & Richard Eyre and the Tyrrell 011 of John Wilson with Hubertus Bahlsen’s Arrows A4 thrown into the mix. Eyre – also running in the Group C series over the weekend – put the car sixth on the grid, just behind Wilson who returned to TGP after a few races away determined to put up a fight. With Stretton separating them from the front three, they would both have a battle to stay in contention. Bahlsen, driving the sister car to wife Andrea’s chassis five, lay third with Folch missing out on pole to Dayton by half a second.
Come Sunday lunchtime, the focus was on the skies as the TGP cars rolled out of their garages but, for once, not due to bad weather. As the Spitfire flypast disappeared into the horizon, engines fired into life and the TGP aces flew out of the pit lane to form up the grid. Hubertus Bahlsen, as ever, was the only driver to attempt two tours whilst the pit lane stayed open for 5 minutes from the green light and the rest of the field waited for him to arrive as the countdown continued. Ferrari mechanics were busy changing tyres on the ex-Gilles Villeneuve car. The Race Director called the three-minute board up as they finished. With one minute to go, the teams left the grid and away the cars went on the green flag lap, returning to their grid place two minutes later to await the green light.
The cars got away from the lights at first attempt. Up front, Folch got the drop on Dayton with Bahlsen moving to try and get between the pair of them. This allowed Wilson to attack the space left by Bahlsen and at the first corner as they lined-up it was Folch from Dayton from Wilson with Bahlsen, Stretton and Eyre close behind. Rowland Kinch (Arrows A1) made a good first lap moving up from twelfth to tenth by the end of it and pressuring Bosch in only his second race in the car. Kinch would out-brake himself later in the piece and drop back from Bosch by around 10 seconds. Behind him Walzer, Gallego, Bindells and Abbott were beginning a battle that would last the entire race and that saw them all running nose-to-tail for the majority of the race.
Folch tried to stretch out a lead in the early stages, pushing the gap to just over a second after 2 laps but not able to shake the American loose. Dayton clawed back the gap as the pair pulled away from the chasing pack of Bahlsen, Stretton et al. On Lap 6, Wilson suddenly lost rear end grip and returned to the pits where his team pointed out that a plane on his rear wing had flown off. They changed the wing and he returned to the race but with no chance of scoring the result he wanted. That let Bahlsen through into third and spurred Stretton to try and take that last podium spot from the Swiss racer. Janine Payne was also out of the race by this point having lost gears on the Arrows, ruining any chance of repeating her podium heroics from Germany a month before.
Bindels had passed Abbott by lap four in the scrap down the pack. There was some gap back to Collins’ Lotus 91 who in turn had clean air back to Sid Hoole, the hard-charging Morrison and Tony Smith. On Lap 6, Smith had Morrison before they both outbraked each other and allowed Andrea Bahlsen through to pass them both. As the leaders came by them on lap 8 they saw Dayton ahead of Folch by half a second but the Catalan driver was far from through. When they crossed the line on lap 9 the gap was a mere three tenths of a second and a fight to the finish looked on. Bahlsen was himself getting a harassing from Stretton still whilst Eyre had dropped off the pace through the back-markers and had a comfortable gap back to Hartley in sixth. The titanic battle between Gallego, Walzer, Bindells and Abbott continued throughout all this but with Gallego developing gearbox issues, Walzer went for a pass in the traffic and between them they managed to get tangled up with one another and both arrived at the pits on lap 11 with some miserable looking ironmongery. It was put down to a ‘racing incident’ but Gallego’s retirement compounded a bad weekend for his MEC Auto team who had already seen De Wagter go out on lap 5. Abbott gave it a go at getting Bindells in the closing stages but the Cumbrian property developer couldn’t quite get his Luxembourg-based equivalent.
With three laps to go, Folch went for it…but got it wrong. Finishing lap ten over two and a half seconds behind Dayton signalled the end of his challenge and the American took another TGP win in the Sid Hoole prepared Williams. Stretton was still in with a chance but took the flag just over a second behind Bahlsen having fought all the way for fourth. John Delane took the Class A honours ahead of Ryan who had the weekend from hell in all competitions he took part in but who nevertheless managed to get the Tyrrell to the flag. Bosch was second in class B on the track but, like Folch, would do better than that in the points scoring as both Dayton and Stretton are not eligible for points. The ‘win’ would put Bosch two points top of the championship standings for the first time in his ‘rookie’ year ahead of current leader Christian Glasel who was not present at Silverstone due to business commitments. Glasel remains second, tied on points with Hartley; these three drivers are probably the only ones with a realistic chance of winning the title at this stage of the year.
The next round of the championship takes place at Magny Cours, France on 4th September before heading to Brands Hatch and finally Estoril. For the last three years, the championship has been decided at the last race of the year and it looks like once again the FIA TGP World Championship will go down to the wire.
