Flames, T-bones, and triumph over adversity at Brands

The old maxim that ‘it wouldn’t be any fun if it was easy’ found itself being stretched to breaking point at Brands Hatch, as the Time Attack carnival rolled into town on September 25^th. Spirits were high and teams highly engaged as all sought to test and advance the lessons learned throughout the season, and analyse how their respective performances across the scorching summer would translate to this autumn round with its radically reduced temperatures.

It was certainly an event rich in drama. The main source of wagging tongues was the unfortunate incident between Team BC Racing Driver Sam Pickering’s Subaru Impreza and Team BC Racing's Chris Williams’ EF Honda Civic, the two of them colliding in calamitous style in an episode that began at Surtees and came to a head at McLaren. Thankfully both drivers walked away, although it’s hard to say whether the dislocated shoulder or the bruised ego will be causing Sam more grief. We’ll let him talk us through the crash: “It was a steady out lap in qualifying to warm the tyres up, and by lap 2 I was flying – a 51.0-second lap, so half-a-second off the record set by myself earlier in the year. I was all set to up the boost going into lap 3, feeling good, power up, but the entry speed into Surtees was perhaps a little too high so a little more braking occurred; there was too much weight off the back end which lightened it too much and caused a slide. I thought I had it, but just as it straightened and was about to start going the right way and into Clearways, Chris’s Civic was there. There was nothing either of us could have done about it, Chris had got well off the line and out of my way, but unfortunately nobody expected me to be sliding towards that side of the track at that pace. The impact was even worse than I had braced myself for, and at one point I thought it was going over for a roll. Not nice, but both drivers walked away reasonably unharmed.”

As if that wasn’t excitement enough, there was an altogether more incandescent type of theatrics in the Pro Extreme class, as Team BC Racing Tim Bedford’s Impreza took it upon itself to extravagantly go up in flames. “A pipe running to an oil pressure sensor sprung a leak, and sprayed oil onto the exhaust which caught fire,” he explains. “Fortunately, fellow competitor Tom Moon had a spare at his unit an hour away; a two-hour round trip later, Sam Pickering found one in the bottom of his spares box! After a wash down of extinguisher dust and the new part installed, the head scrutineer gave us the all-clear to go back out in quali. There was no real damage done other than the outer coating of a brake line melting – new ones will be ordered for the next round, but it still worked fine and held pressure.” With everything back together he was able to post a time of 52.564, overcoming all of this fiery adversity to scoop third-in-class for Pro Extreme.

Unfortunately Michael Andrew wasn't in attendance this time out as his B16 failed on the pit straight the week prior to Brands, at Hillclimb Monsters at Mallory Park. However, there was better news in the Clubman class as Bren Simpson jumped into Ann Buckley’s #bcequipped Fiesta ST for the day, coming away with an impressive 2^nd place, clocking a 56.493 lap.

All in all then, a pretty eventful day. But that’s Time Attack for you! Join us at Snetterton for Round 8 on October 23^rd – there’s no way of predicting what drama will unfold next time.