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3rd-4th July 2010 - Brands Hatch Grand Prix
David Methley Wins Again
David Methley showed his class with another suberb win in the first of the Peter Hanson Trophy races for 2010. David chased race winner Ian Gray all the way throughout the 20 minute race, just sneaking ahead on a couple of occasions, but the power of of the 1600 in Ian's Brabham saw him able to pull ahead on the straights.
Twenty One Litre Formula Three cars gathered for the first round of the Peter Hanson Trophy on the Grand Prix loop at Brands Hatch on July 3rd, once again incorporated in the HSCC’s Classic Racing Cars class. Entries were down on 2009, but Monaco, the Nurburgring’s mechanical problems and a single race all contributed to this reduction.
Christophe Widmer was making a first appearance at Brands with his Brabham BT18, whilst Philippe Bonny had taken over Michel Renavand’s entry after his Nurburgring dramas. Friday testing had been restricted to the Indy circuit and just three laps had seen the demise of Francois Derossi’s Chevron with loss of compression on number three cylinder.
Chris Holland has been suffering from an elusive handling problem for most of this season which has been driving him to distraction; the discovery that his tyre pressure gauge was reading six pounds out has restored the Brabham to its usual friendly self. At the end of the fifteen minute qualifying session David Methley was on pole over two seconds ahead of 5th reserve Nigel Bancroft (who had an oil leak) and Vincent Rivet who was back at Brands for the first time since 2006. Methley had a scare when his Merlyn lost all its coolant fortunately without ill effect, Fischer was fourth fastest ahead of Holland, with Stuart Tizzard and Philippe Bonny closely bunched behind him. Jim Chapman had adventures on the kerbs exiting Druids leaving his Lotus with slightly mangled body work, behind him was Paul McMorran who was further down the order than usual. Messrs O’nion, Wilkinson and Bosson were all grouped within half a second; of the remaining runners we lost Rene Ligonet with a blown engine after one lap, and John Counsell stopped on his fifth lap after a mix up over fuelling.
Race time was 5.20 so after a long hot afternoon 'relaxing' the field assembled, there was some confusion in calling up the cars and among those delayed was Peter Williams who was unable to take the start, Nigel Bancroft (fifth reserve) managed to find his way into the pit lane and eventually started from there. Roland Fischer was having problems with his Tecno and failed to take the start after a gear linkage failure.
The start procedure was rushed, and several people in the back half of the grid were out of position, but no matter the lights went out and off we went, Methley made a superb start and was soon doing battle with Ian Gray’s Brabham twin cam actually taking the lead at one point but coming home second overall and first Peter Hanson runner, his fastest lap a shade under 1:39!. The potential battle between Methley and Bancroft was foiled by the latter’s pit lane start, which was eventually rewarded with a fighting fourth place. Vincent Rivet and Chris Holland came home second and third the Londoner much happier on the correct tyre pressures, Paul McMorran came home fifth ahead of Jim Chapman whose Lotus was a tribute to the powers of ‘racer tape’. Bonny brought his Tecno home seventh after an energetic run whilst Geoff O’nion got the better of Steve Wilkinson for eighth leaving the Cheshire man the last unlapped runner. Counsell, Bosson, Widmer, Thorpe and Froude all came home safely, whilst we lost Stuart Tizzard to over heating on lap five, and Trevor Messet disappeared on the first lap.
The race time is shown in the official results as 17:49.722 but this includes the formation lap and thus goes some way to explain the peculiar average speeds; race time was effectively around 12 minutes.
Next round of the Peter Hanson Trophy will be at the Oulton Park Gold Cup Meeting on the August Bank Holiday week-end.
View Results and Timings (as a PDF document) [PDF]
