After a few weeks of excitement, during which FRC's new British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) class was announced and a record number of people registered cars for the category, our first event was held, with nine drivers bringing cars to compete. Being a brand-new class, there was no reference point for the kind of times to expect, so drivers hit the track as soon as they arrived to set practice times and determine where they stood with the competition. As you'll see from the qualifying times below, with the stand-out exception of one car, all the rest were very close indeed.
As scheduled, we started the event with the rally stages and were happy to welcome one of T&T's very talented (but crazy in my mind!) circuit bike racers, Warren Luke De Nobriga (Luke D) as a first-time FRC competitor. Warren got his feet wet driving the rally stages in a loaner car from Steve, this class being a particularly difficult one to go fast in since the cars are magnet-less, but, being the competitive type, he improved with each stage. Once again the stages were close at the front and it was good to see the improvement O'Brie has made with his Porsche, even getting down into the rare 7-second lap time bracket for the first time.
The single Slot.It Challenge race was almost something of an afterthought, as it was getting late and everyone was pretty tuckered out, but at least we were able to complete the programme.
The results
The rally competitors:
With a total of nine entries, our inaugural BTCC class was split into two races, followed by a reverse-grid final comprising the top three from each group. Here's the race-one starting grid with Luke B's VW Passat on pole, followed by my Honda Civic, O'Brie's Civic, Steve's BMW 125i and Arden's Civic:
The second BTCC grid saw Luke T's BMW 125i at the front, followed by Anthony's Civic, Ramesh's BMW and Devi's Civic:
The BTCC reverse grid final, with Luke T. at the front driving Arden's Civic, Anthony's Civic, Ramesh's BMW 125i, Steve's similar car, my Civic and Luke B's Passat temporarily bringing up the rear:
Luke B's VW Passat lies stranded near the Dunlop bridge after an off in race one:
More race-one action as Arden's Civic goes sideways ahead of O'Brie's Civic and Steve's BMW while Luke B plays a little catch-up behind. My Civic is temporarily at the front on the infield:
This is how close things were at times during the BTCC races. In this race-three shot, my Civic is somewhat sandwiched between Ramesh's BMW in front and Steve's extremely close following BMW:
More third race fun as Anthony's Civic, Luke's Civic, Luke B's Passat and my Civic do battle on the infield:
Slot.It Challenge starting grid - Ramesh's Nissan R89C sits on pole, followed by Luke B's Nissan R90CK, Arden driving a Team Bhola Toyota 88C, my R89C and Steve's 88C. My R89C had actually qualified third fastest, but was written up as fourth and started from that position:
My R89C lies on its roof along the downhill back straight after I crashed it into Arden's 88C, as Steve's 88C heads into the sunset on the road below:
(How this is computed: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=393)
Congratulations to the winners.
Next event's classes: Class grouping C: Modified Production (MP), Restricted GT (RGT), Restricted LMP (RLMP), Formula 1 (F1).
Don't forget to see the updated overall fastest times and the fastest times by driver and class for 2019 to know what the benchmarks are for your cars, the updated class average qualifying times and the updated fastest times for 2019. Older stats can be found in the Archive area of the forum.
See you on the circuit...
Gordon
