Jay Westwood wins BRCA Rd1 @ West London as Mi3.5 and new Mi4 prototypes perform well!!
The first round of the BRCA Nationals took place over the weekend with the Schumacher Team in attendance at the West (Wet) London Racing Centre.
The new season has brought some new faces to the Schumacher team and with it a new sense of competitiveness for all the drivers. Some drivers faired better than others on a very difficult weekend which was hampered by very tough weather conditions and new rules changes, which had most of the guys in deep thought and conversation throughout the weekend.
The first 2 rounds of qualifying went extremely well for Chris Grainger and the new prototype Mi4 which were set when the track was dry and at it’s quickest. Two TQ’s out of the first two runs showed how good the new car is backing up what we saw earlier in the month at the BTCC and in pre-season testing.
Early doors in the Pro Stock class Rob West and Mark Musgrove were looking strong, taking the top two places after the three rounds of qualifying. Sunday dawned clear and dry with potentially 3 new Mi4’s aiming for the mod A final with Chris, Colin Price and Lee Woodhams all inside the top 7 so far, but all knew there was still a lot of work to do with two rounds of qualifying left. Unfortunately during the mid point of the first round the winds got up and the heavens opened leaving the drivers scurrying around trying to prepare wet weather cars. At least everyone remained dry in the new Schumacher Team Gazebo which certainly for this race took round one in ‘Gazebo Wars’!
Chris was on for a top 3 finish in the wet condition of round 4 which would of almost certainly given him pole position until his car slowed on the final lap only enabling to take 5th in the round with one round to go. Unfortunately Chris’s electrical problems did not cure themselves for the final round and he ended up lining up 3rd on the grid behind Olly Jefferies and Andy Moore.
Back into Pro Stock and the brave Rob West didn’t bother going out in the wet conditions and still managed to take the TQ spot with his Mi3 owing to his Saturday qualifiers. Rob was joined by the Jay Westwood, (3rd) Mark Musgrove (4th) Andrew Low (6th) and Tim Langdell (8th) in the extremely competitive A final.
In the mod class the Schumacher boys took an unfortunate slide mainly due to the conditions but Lee Woodhams joined Chris in the A final with his Mi4, luck wasn’t on the side of Colin Price who ended up 11th.
The Mod A finals were tough affairs for Chris and Lee, with them having less new tyres to play with than most of the field they were battling mid pack most of the time and seamed to collect everyone else’s accidents with no luck whatsoever. Andy Moore showed his class and took the overall victory with Chris taking 5th and Lee 9th, not what they were hoping for after the awesome start to Saturday.
Pro stock was a different affair though with the Schumacher drivers winning all three legs of the A final. However, with 3 different winners in Rob, Mark and Jay it made the finals very interesting!! Jay came from nowhere in the final leg of the A to take the victory and the overall win with some very consistent final scores with Rob taking an excellent 2nd and Mark 4th. Congratulations to Jay for his first national win!
At this years nationals the new Manufactures Championship is taking place, with 3 drivers from each class in each team. The Schumacher team consist of Chris Grainger, Lee Woodhams and Chris Ashton in Mod, while Rob West, Mark Musgrove and Byron Humphries join them from Pro Stock. The team took a close second place at this race by one point from Xray and are looking to push on at the next race at Halifax in a few weeks time.
Congratulations from all at Schumacher for some excellent results!
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