Programme Chaos After Race Ender For Smith
The finale of the BTRA British Truck Racing Championship got underway at Brands Hatch in Kent yesterday with championship protagonists battling hard to claim title glory. By the end of the only race held on Saturday, one title had been all but decided but complications in the battle plan of defending champion Matt Summefield, left the class 1 battle even tighter.
In free practice the challenger, in the form of the #69 MAN TGA of David Jenkins headed the field by more than a quarter of a second from the TGS of #1 driver, Matt Summerfield. Steve Thomas’ TGX rounded out the class 1 top three and was the only other truck within a second, or even within four seconds of the pace laid down by the Digigraph sponsored machine.
A bumper crop of visiting trucks put further complications into analysing the results, especially in class 2 where the session was topped by the bonneted Axor of Sascha Lenz, who also took the honour of being the fastest of the visitors. The all-orange Benz was thirteen hundreths of a second faster than the T124 of Cees Zandbergen who races in the top class! The second T-Cab Scania, a T112 of Frans Smit came second in the class 2 battle ahead of the fastest of the BTRA full season runners, Graham Powell.#
Visiting friends made points analysis harder but really looked the part.
In qualifying the battle at the top switched, putting Matt Summerfield clear by three quarters of a second almost from the TGX of Thomas. Jenkins was still in third place ahead of the Dutch T124 and the Germanic Axor which again took the top spot in class 2. Graham Powell’s ERF entered, Renault bodied E C X took second in the class 2 order ahead of David Smith’s Foden Alpha.
Once the first race got underway, the action started in earnest with trucks on the grass even before they hit the famous Paddock Hill Bend. The #77 of James Aikenhead in the black Ford Iveco was out of the race before the class 1 trucks had even been given the green flag. Then out of turn two, the equally famous Druids corner, Matt Summerfield stuffed it. He lost the back end and impacted the Armco on the inside of the track, crumpling the front of his MAN TGS and forcing his retirement from the race after just one lap. His failure to classify would allow David Jenkins to close the points gap, though a shortening of the race restricted his ability to make up places.
Summerfield will be regretting this mistake which closed the points gap.
With two major hazards on the circuit the race was red flagged and the D&G Recovery wreckers set to work. Summerfield managed to recover himself to the pits before calling it a race, the Iveco came back on the hoist of D&G’s lovely new Stralis based recovery unit.
When the race got back underway it was business as usual for five laps, firm but fair was the order of the day even as the class 1 entries begun to carve their way through the class 2 action. Then the major talking point of the season happened as John Powell slammed the door on David Smith, the title challenger in class 2! When we say slammed the door we mean it too as the Ford Cargo battered the Foden Alpha onto the grass and into a roll. The Alpha was left on its side and Smith extracted himself from the wreckage, crossing the Armco on the Cooper Straight before the marshals had even radioed the accident in.
This accident delayed the second race and put’s Smith’s title challenge in doubt.
The damage to the truck was severe, with talk of it not racing again this year at least but the team are working hard to repair the machine for action. The first we will know if the title is all but won will be when the Volvo White of Brian Burt crosses the start line for race two, which was postponed to Sunday, without the Foden in hot pursuit.
The race 2 battle was postponed because of the damage to the circuit. Smith flattened the Armco for the better part of 100m when his truck came down on it but there was also work to be done on the drop from Druids to Graham Hill where Summerfield clipped the barriers too. Finally there was remedial work being done on the pit wall too as the #36 of Heinz-Werner Lenz, the father of Sascha in the bonneted Axor, put his all orange cabover Actros into the pit wall a lap before the action kicked off with Smith’s Foden.
The result was called with Ricky Collett’s #95 claiming the class one victory but being overshadowed. As the race didn’t manage it’s full distance Graham Powell was able to claim the overall race win, along with class 2 honours from Simon Ried’s Seddon Atkinson Strato. Frans Smit was third in class and on the track with Brian Burt’s Volvo in fourth in class and sixth on the road. In class 1 Steve Thomas took second from Collett’s MAN TGA with Cees Zandbergen in the Scania T-Cab in third.
Ricky Collett was in fine spirit yesterday evening after his win.
The title situation going into the final day of racing is close to say the least. In class 2 Brian Burt has extended his lead over both David Smith and Jim Bennett by seven points putting fifteen between himself and the Foden and 36 between himself and the Seddon Atkinson of Bennett. There is little chance that Bennett will overhaul though as his truck hasn’t been fast all season. In class 1 the cat is really among the pigeons. Summerfield still holds the title battle lead but his margin shrunk from thirty-five points to just twenty-eight. There are forty points left on the board in each class.
