Team Parker Racing’s Euan Hankey and Glynn Geddie both scored podium finishes in the second round of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB at Rockingham Motor Speedway.
Somerset man Hankey and Scotsman Geddie each took a third place from the two races, while Leicester racer Stephen Jelley claimed a fourth, the best result yet of his short Carrera Cup career.
After proving the revelation of the opening round at Thruxton on his Carrera debut, Porsche scholarship winner Hankey qualified fifth at Rockingham and made lightning starts to briefly lead both races as the pack jostled into the first hairpin.
He settled into third place in race one and ran there to the finish, but in race two he spun at the hairpin and then pirouetted into the gravel after hitting fluid left on the circuit by a collision between two other cars.
“I led both races for about a second!” said Hankey. “I got pushed out a bit at the hairpin in race one and then settled into third. I could see the guys ahead but I was really struggling with my tyres, so I just chilled out and settled for the third place. The second race just all went horribly wrong! I carried too much speed into the hairpin and it was very dirty off line, so I spun. When I hit the fluid I touched the throttle so lightly, but it spun me round into the gravel.”
Geddie took sixth place in the opening race, troubled by his tyres fading dramatically, but charged from the fourth row to third position on the opening lap of race two and then fended off team-mate Jelley to take the final spot on the podium.
“I pushed my tyres too hard in the first race,” he said. “We made a change to the car overnight and it was lightning on the first couple of laps, but then it dropped off again. I had a problem with brakes, so I had to concentrate on getting good exits to corners so Stephen couldn’t get me. I’ll be really pushing for the next round at Brands Hatch next weekend!”
Hankey and Geddie now lie third and fourth respectively in the championship table.
Jelley, who was a British Touring Car Championship race winner at Rockingham, did an excellent job to qualify third and fourth for the two races. In the first race he was forced to retire with a damaged radiator after hitting another car when he was caught out by it braking early. In the second race he made a storming start to go second, but then got shuffled down to fourth.
“Someone jumped on the brakes in the first race and I ran into the back of him and knackered the radiator,” he said. “In the second race I just got boxed out on the first lap. I felt quick and the car was pretty good. You can’t win them all, but I feel I’m getting more knowledge of the cars now and I think I’m capable of a good result.”
Stuart Parker, team principal of the squad that carried Tim Bridgman to the 2009 title, said: “We’ve not quite got the pace at the moment. It was a solid weekend but we’re not quite fast enough. The podiums are good but at the end of the day we don’t want to be the best of the rest – we want to be the best!”
The Porsche Carrera Cup enjoyed live coverage of the second race at Rockingham on ITV4, and was streamed live on itv.com. The next round takes place at Brands Hatch, Kent, this coming weekend on May 1-2.
