Former Le Mans Endurance Series driver Rick Pearson enjoyed a strong first outing in his first ever Dutch Supercar cup race for new team, Pro Motorsport at Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday.

Racing Laurent Aiello’s 1999 British Touring Car Championship-winning Nissan Primera, Pearson and his team mate, Derek Palmer Jnr were forced to get to grips with the car in short order following the enforced cancellation of pre-season testing at Donington.

“Snow in England forced us to pull the plug on our testing programme so the first chance that Derek and I had to get in the car was at Spa on Friday,” Pearson explained.”

Qualifying

Both qualifying sessions for the opening two rounds of the Dutch Supercar Cup took place in dry conditions. Pearson and Palmer shared the workload, with Pearson setting the car’s best time of 1m38.0s at the end of session two.

“The dry weather was a bit of a shame as the Nissan was likely to be very competitive in the wet but qualifying went well considering that the car was new to me and the circuit new to Derek so really, we were just making sure that everyone was comfortable.”

Race

The first of the two one-hour races marking the opening salvo in the Dutch championship attracted a forty-four car grid, giving Palmer and Pearson ample opportunity to pitch their seven-year-old, MAN Financial sponsored Nissan Primera against a host of younger cars.

The Primera’s pedigree held strong despite stiff competition in race one, showing the crowd just why it won the BTCC title in 1999, romped to the European Touring Car Championship title in 2001 and set the second fastest time up the hill at Goodwood last year.

Resplendent in its 1999 BTCC Championship winning Vodafone/Nissan/Daily Telegraph livery, the Pro Motorsport-run car charged to eleventh, improving three places on its starting position.

Race two was a tale of two halves with Pearson and Palmer enjoying a seemingly insurmountable thirty second class lead while lapping in sixth position overall when debris puncturing the radiator forced the car in to retirement.

The stunning best lap time of 2m33.6 would have been good enough for 3rd on the grid at last year’s World Touring Car race.

“We had a steep learning curve this weekend but I found chunks of time each time I went out on the circuit which is very encouraging. The Nissan Primera performed exceptionally well – it’s still an incredibly advanced Touring Car as Nissan put such a huge effort into developing it in 1999.

“We’ll definitely be out in the next two rounds at Zolder and Brands Hatch and will hopefully take the car back to Goodwood later in the year.”