Race 1 - Saturday 28 May

Race one was a clear reminder that every point has to be earned in British GT racing. Chris Niarchos was unable to take the start for Scuderia Ecosse at Thruxton when the driveshaft broke on his 360 GTC just before the green flag was waved to signal the start of the race.

After the Ferrari was cleared from the grid the field was waved through and Nathan Kinch in the other Ecosse 360 GTC got away well from pole position and set about building up his lead. A couple of laps into the race a Cup class Porsche dropped oil on the track and as Nathan came into the chicane on lap three he lost the rear end and through sailed two TVRs and a Mosler. He had a lot of work to do to regain his lead but was helped along the way by the Safety Car being despatched 20 minutes into the race whilst marshals recovered a car off the track.

As soon as the pit window opened, 23 minutes into the race, the leaders all dived into the pits. Good teamwork from the Scuderia Ecosse pit crew gave Andrew Kirkaldy the jump on one of the TVRs and the Mosler and he set off in second place chasing down the TVR of Warren Hughes. After some good racing Andrew overtook the TVR and set off for the chequered flag and the fourth win of 2005 for the Kinch/Kirkaldy partnership.

The Damax car of Miles Huford and Jamie Smyth qualified 6th in the Cup class and was in 4th place until the safety car period. The team called Jamie in on the radio, but got no reply and he went past the pits. Unfortunately, most of the other teams came in and changed drivers so as not to waste the normal driver change period. On the next lap he did come in and handed over to Miles but by now he was a lap down. Things went from bad to worse as the electronic gearbox started telling him that he was in reverse as he was going through Church corner at 150mph ! The gearbox then started only giving him certain gears (including indicating reverse!) and understandably he was a tad concerned, so he came into the pits to have this checked.

A brief stop revealed nothing wrong after the engine was "re-booted". However on rejoining the race Miles was penalised for speeding in the pit lane on his exit. This meant a drive-through penalty which cost even more time. The gearbox problem returned almost immediately and in the end he could only get 1st gear. So for the last few laps he drove round in 1st gear to inish last but one.

Even worse befell the sister car of Marco Attard and Nick Adams, which Marco lost on the green flag lap and crashed just after the complex damaging front and back. He brought the car back to the pits while the race started, but a damaged radiator ended their race there and then. The poor mechanics were destined to spend another evening panel beating....

Adam Wilcox had been confirmed to replace Ian Flux as team-mate for the rest of the season to Phil Burton in the Vision Racing, JMH run 360, which was the only other Ferrari entered for Thruxton. They qualified 16th in the GT3 class, but things improved dramatically in the race. They came home 6th (and leading Ferrari) in class.


Race 2 - Sunday 29 May

Andrew Kirkaldy and Tim Mullen got their two Scuderia Ecosse 360GTCs easily away from the front row of the grid at the start of race two and put on a great show for the spectators, running within a second of each other for most of the first half. After faultless stints from both drivers, during which Tim grabbed fastest race lap and took a new lap record, Tim pitted first to hand over to Chris Niarchos.

Frustratingly their car wouldn't start after the pit stop so by the time Chris was back out on the track he found himself down in fourth place. Kirkaldy then came in to hand over to Kinch who, like his team mate yesterday, took the Ferrari all the way to the chequered flag, taking win number five.

Sunday's brief warm-up session confirmed that both Damax cars were all working OK and the team looked forward to a better day. Miles Hulford started the race in 9th place and had made up a couple of places only to loose them again avoiding a spinning Nick Adams in the team's other car! The race was to prove very heavy on tyres for the Porsches, many of them wrecking and puncturing off-side rear tyres which helped the team's progress up the race order with Nick now chasing the pack after his spin.

Hulford managed to move up to 5th place by the driver changeover at half distance. Jamie Smyth took over and went out in a clean pit stop but once again the engine's loss of power returned and was eventually so bad that he gradually dropped down the order to finish 10th out of 15 in class. In the meantime Adams had changed over to Attard and worked his way up to finish 7th by the finish.

This was a weekend Damax will be happy to forget but no-one thought British GT would be easy

Burton and Wilcox qualified the Vision Racing car 11th in class and they came home 8th in the race, some 18 seconds behind Attard/Adams.

The next round is at Castle Combe on the 26th June. In the meantime, Scuderia Ecosse have another little meeting to get out of the way - the Le Mans 24 hour race!

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