Multiple one-make saloon car title winning team Total Control Racing superbly turned its hand to endurance action for the first time at Brands Hatch Indy Circuit on Saturday, 13th November, by taking a tremendous class win and outright podium finish in the Britcar ‘Into the Night’ race.
Running a Ginetta G50 as an invitation entry in Class 3, the car was piloted by Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship ace Alex MacDowall and his father Ray – no mean racer himself – to a stunning overall podium.
Comfortably winning their class, in the overall results the Cumbrian pairing were third only to the Class 1 race winning Mosler of Martin Short and the second placed Class 1 Ferrari 430 GTC of Witt Gamski and Keith Robinson – a stunning effort.
Commenting on the Wednesbury-based team’s highly successful endurance racing debut, TCR’s Lee Brookes said: “It’s been a great weekend for the team and to do so well in our first ever endurance race is absolutely fantastic. We’ve had a great time working with Alex and Ray again, they both did a terrific job and thoroughly deserved the outright podium as well as the class win.”
Posting the fifth fastest time outright during the morning warm-up, their first ever experience of the Ginetta G50, the MacDowalls were 10th quickest – the Class 3I leaders – during day qualifying and then fifth fastest overall once again in night qualifying.
Lining up 10th on the grid for the start of the 90-minute encounter, Ray took the opening stint and although a moment on lap three dropped the TCR machine to 18th overall a great recovery lifted the car into the top eight prior to the first Safety Car period of the race on lap 23.
Climbing as high as fifth overall before taking their compulsory driver-change pit-stop with around 50 minutes of racing left to run, Alex took over and rejoined the track in 13th position. Within 10 laps he had moved back into eighth and soon enough he was fifth overall and edging ever closer to an outright podium.
Claiming fourth on lap 76, Alex moved into third overall on lap 90 to seal a tremendous debut outing in Britcar for TCR. He also took the fastest Class 3I race lap of 49.915 seconds (86.44mph) and ended the encounter three laps clear of the other Ginetta G50 shared by Julien Draper and Jon Barnes.
Brookes added: “With the help of Alex and Ray we’ve shown we can be very competitive in this style of racing, it’s definitely something we’re looking at seriously for 2011 to run alongside our regular campaigns in Clios and Ginettas. We always thought it would be a good weekend but to have turned out as well as it has is testament to all the hard work the entire team has put in.”
TCR now heads into winter testing eager to hear from drivers interested in either the ELF Renault Clio Cup, Michelin Ginetta G50 Cup or, indeed, Britcar and British GT. For more details of the options available, please contact Lee Brookes on 0121 5561999 or by email to p1tcr@aol.com
