Ecurie Ecosse Powered By Black Bull’s Marco Attard and Alexander Sims once again proved their mettle by salvaging fourth place from a tricky fifth Avon Tyres British GT Championship round of the season at Spa-Francorchamps on Saturday (July 11).
That the legendary Scottish squad came close to maintaining its run of three consecutive series podiums owed much to the actions of its rivals on a weekend when the team didn’t quite reach the heights it’s become accustomed to. Nevertheless, as others fell by the wayside the Barwell Motorsport-run championship leaders were there to pick up the pieces and extend their points advantage to 14.5 over the chasing pack as the season enters its second half.
With their aggregate time from Friday’s split qualifying session good enough for fourth on the grid, Attard was eager for a repeat of his and Sims’ victory at the same legendary Belgian venue 12 months ago. But his hopes of a second win of the season suffered a setback at the first corner of the opening lap when the reigning Drivers’ champion selected the wrong gear and tumbled down the order before the misdemeanours and retirements of others helped him regain some of the lost ground.
Two Safety Car periods, the second of which coincided with the pit window opening, kept the field tight. Indeed, it was a little too tight at one stage when Rick Parfitt Jnr hit Attard from behind while the pair were running sixth and seventh, respectively.
That incident with the Ginetta, as well as having to serve an additional 10-second success penalty during the mandatory pit-stop for finishing third at Silverstone last time out, saw Sims emerge only 10th on the road. And although his pace was amongst the fastest of the frontrunners, so big was the gap that the BMW factory driver had little chance of passing those ahead without their co-operation.
Such was the rate of attrition, though, at the notoriously challenging Spa-Francorchamps circuit that he was up to fifth by the time the two-hour race came to an end. And that subsequently became fourth when Rory Butcher was penalised for passing the BMW before the Safety Car line earlier in the race.
Marco Attard: “It’s definitely a result after everything that happened, especially at the start when I made a mistake at La Source. The Aston Martins were also much stronger than us today. Then I was hit by Rick Parfitt going into Pouhon just before the second Safety Car came out, so to have survived all of that and extend our championship lead is incredible. We’d have probably taken it after qualifying. For whatever reason we have a knack of picking up decent points in the races that matter.”
Alexander Sims: “To be honest we gained most of our places from other people falling off or coming together! That was the case in my stint, anyway. We certainly could have come away with a far worse result, but I guess we were rewarded for keeping it together at a very demanding track. Perhaps that was the difference today. We struggled to get anywhere near the Astons this weekend anyway, so in terms of damage limitation we’ve done a good job even if you always like to finish higher. Definitely a case of points saved.”
Mark Lemmer, Barwell Motorsport Team Principal: “It certainly feels great to score strong points at this one, but for some reason we are being forced to run heavier against the Astons than ever before; they’re in a different league to us pace-wise at the moment. But of course we will keep on fighting!”
Ecurie Ecosse will be back in the Ardennes just two weeks from now for the blue riband instalment of their Blancpain Endurance Series campaign – the 24 Hours of Spa (July 21-26) – before returning to British GT action at Brands Hatch on August 1/2.
