Solid showing for Richardson Racing at Croft Ginetta GT5 Challenge

The Richardson Racing secured a brace of top six finishes on a competitive weekend of action in the latest rounds of the Protyre Motorsport Ginetta GT5 Challenge at Croft.Expanding to a two-car outfit for the first time this season, the Corby-based team showed it’s potential to run at the front of the pack in front of a bumper crowd at the North Yorkshire circuit, with Andrew Richardson and Alex Toth-Jones both coming away from the meeting pleased with their end results.Andrew’s participation in the event was only confirmed in the days leading up the weekend, with the team only collecting his Ginetta G40 en-route to the circuit. Monumental work on arrival at the circuit on Thursday readied Andrew’s car for the start of on-track action during Friday testing, and he then put his car in a solid sixth on the grid for race one in Saturday’s qualifying session.Although he ran as high as fourth at one stage, Andrew had to contend himself with a sixth place finish in race one before an impressive drive on old tyres in race two saw him take fourth; his best lap being just two-tenths of a second off the benchmark set on new rubber.“All things considered, it’s gone well this weekend,” he said. “It was a last minute deal to compete at Croft and the team has done an astonishing job to basically rebuild the car at the circuit ahead of the weekend. They put so much work into it and the pace we showed in the races was really encouraging, especially in race two.“I was a bit frustrated with myself in qualifying as I think I overdrove a little bit and didn’t get the best from the tyres and race one was all about continuing to make improvements to the car and tweaking things to get more from it. Despite running on older tyres to the guys around me, we were really quick in race two and that is something that is really pleasing for us to take away from the weekend.”For team-mate Alex, the weekend was expected to be a challenge with no new tyres available as part of his tyre allocation for the season.Despite that, he qualified in 14th position on the grid and was making his forwards through the field in the early stages of race one only for contact from behind at the hairpin on lap two to demote him to almost the rear of the field.A solid recovery saw him battle his way to 17th at the finish, which is where he would then start the second race of the weekend. Continuing to display impressive race craft, Alex showed pace comparable with a number of the top ten runners as he took the flag in 13th place gaining more vital experience in his maiden season of car competition.“The fact I didn’t have new tyres for this weekend meant I was on the back foot, especially in qualifying, but I think I drove well in the races and our pace was good; it’s just unfortunate that the incident in race one hampered my chances,” he said. “The start had been good and I felt we had a car that was good enough for the top ten but then I just got turned round at the final corner. The fact that the other driver was reprimanded afterwards tells its own story, but unfortunately it didn’t help me get back the result.“I think the Safety Car period in race two hampered my chances a bit as I couldn’t build on a decent start but the car felt good underneath me and with more time, we could have been in the top ten again; we certainly had the pace.“Overall, a best result of 13th on paper isn’t what I was hoping for from the weekend but I think the pace is something I can be happy with and I can’t wait for the next round at Spa – it’s a where I’ve always dreamed of racing and that dream will soon come true.”


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