concludes first half of Audi TT Cup season
Audi Sport TT Cup competitor Josh Caygill concluded the first half of the 2015 season at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday, 2nd August, just 4.5 points outside the championship top 10 after a very dramatic ending to the third event of the campaign at the Austrian venue.
While round five on Saturday, 1st August, largely passed without incident as the Netherton driver climbed his way through to a 13th place finish from 15th on the grid, the second contest on Sunday morning was red flagged early on after a major multi-car accident in very wet conditions.
Fortunately, 26-year-old Josh wasn’t involved in the incident – which came on the first racing lap after several initial circuits behind the Safety Car – and he was ultimately classified in his starting place of 16th position with the result declared from the end of lap four.
“It was a big old smash, I didn’t see much of what happened to be fair but we’re just thankful we weren’t involved in it”, said the Yorkshireman, “Starting behind the Safety Car was the right call in the conditions, it gave everyone chance to get a feel for the grip and it’s just very unfortunate how the race and the whole weekend ended to be honest.”
Qualifying 15th fastest for race one, round five, Josh made a good start to Saturday afternoon’s encounter and gained two places on the run through Turn One before being nudged back to 14th position at the midway point of the lap.
Moving back up into 13th on lap two, he then set about trying to break into the top 12 as part of a very tight midfield battle which involved half a dozen cars. Within 0.5 seconds of Alexis van de Poele on lap eight, Josh got alongside the Belgian into lap 10 and made his move for 12th place.
As the duo battled over position, though, Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky was able to sweep past both cars which resulted in Josh remaining in 13th position to the chequered flag on lap 15 – taking the finish just 0.3 seconds outside the top 12.
“We went out in qualifying with two options – go for a time early on or try and build-up to something later in the session”, explained Josh, “We decided to go out and use the ‘Push to Pass’ boost straight away and, in the end, it was probably the wrong call as my best lap at the end of the session, without the extra boost, was still within one tenth of my fastest time.
“My ideal lap would have put me in the top eight so, if I’d pieced it all together, race one could have been a much different story. The car over-heated quite a lot in the first race, so that made it hard to try and slipstream and pass people, but we still made progress and I’m definitely driving better and better. My race pace matched the top five or six which was good, it’s qualifying we need to sort.”
Heavy rain and a saturated track awaited competitors on Sunday morning ahead of round six and, with low hanging cloud ensuring there would be no let-up before the start of the race, officials opted to begin the 15-lap contest behind the Safety Car.
When racing action finally got underway on lap five, with Josh holding 16th position, a huge and extremely frightening multi-car accident on the run to Turn Two – which involved more than half a dozen cars – resulted in an obvious red flag stoppage.
With so many stricken and seriously damaged cars requiring recovery, and a lot of debris on the track needing to be cleared, championship officials elected to declare a result at that point rather than re-start the contest later in the day. Testament to the strength of the Audi Sport TT Cup cars was the fact all drivers involved walked away unharmed.
Josh now heads into a six week summer break from race action with the Audi Sport TT Cup set to resume at Oschersleben in Germany on 12th/13th September.
Provisional 2015 Audi Sport TT Cup Driver Standings (after Rd6): 11th Josh Caygill, 44pts
