• Great charge through field to come home in 12th from 19th on the grid• Huge effort by organisers of the Porsche Supercup made the race weekend happen
This past weekend saw the fourth round of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, taking place at the “Home of British Motorsport”, atSilverstone. Following his improving performance at recent race meetings, the Australian Spike Goddard had another great race, progressing through the field coming from 19th on the grid to a great 12th place finish.
But the race nearly didn´t take place due to the French authorities striking at Calais. All the team trucks filled with the racing cars and equipment were stuck in France and it was only due to a huge effort by Porsche thatthe trucks were able to cross the channel arriving at Silverstone at 10pm on Thursday night after a two-day journey from the Continent. “A huge thank you goes out to Porsche, Formula One Management and the truckies for all their efforts to get the cars to Silverstone,” said Spike Goddard. “At one stage on Thursday afternoon we thought that the race would not happen. It would have been a real shame not to race at Silverstone, one of the greatest race tracks in the world.”
Due to the many guest drivers from the British Porsche Carrera Cup Series, the grid for this Supercup race meeting increased to over 30 cars. The weather was warm and dry for the entire race weekend but the wind was very gusty, especially during qualifying. The 45-minute Free Practice session took place as scheduled on Friday afternoon. During the first half-hour of the session, Spike found it tough to get a good lap time as he was on the old tyres. But then with 12 minutes left in the session he put on a set of new tyres and immediately his performance improved allowing him to set a fastest lap of 2:07.274, the 13th fastest time in the field of 31 and only1.2 seconds behind the fastest lap set by the Spaniard Alex Riberas.
As expected, the lap times were even faster and closer in Saturday morning’s qualifying session. For a large part of the session, there were waived yellow flags in Sector 1 due to an incident, which made it difficult to set improved lap times. “It was definitely not the qualifying performance we had wanted”, said Spike after the session, having qualified in P20 with a time of 2:07.067 (about 0.2 faster than Friday’s time). “It was difficult to geta clear lap in, however, the car had good pace so my aim was to get a good start and push in the race.”
In Sunday morning’s 13-lap race Spike got a good start, made progressthrough the field right from the start and was able to stay out of trouble on a couple of occasions during the race as accidents occurred all around him. During the race he also had a few great battles of his own, made more difficult by a track that did not have much grip. He finished the race in 12th position, only 0.35 seconds in front of Frommenwiler. “I am happy withmy performance during today’s race. It was a very eventful race and I enjoyed it very much”. Spike now looks forward to racing at Zandvoort next weekend in the German Porsche Carrera Cup.
