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Danny Watts (Buckingham) claimed a superb double victory in rounds five and six of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB at Oulton Park over the weekend (13/14 May).
Race One
On a wet and slippery track for the opening race, Watts battled ahead of Tim Harvey as Damien Faulkner chased, while Phil Quaife claimed a pro-am category hat-trick.
Harvey (Witney, Oxon) got the jump on the field as the pack streamed into the first corner, but team mate Michael Caine (Newmarket) slid wide after contact with Watts. Initially, Harvey was able to edge clear, but Watts and Faulkner (Co Donegal, Eire) were chasing hard in the challenging conditions. Caine, meanwhile, toured into the pits with a puncture.
Watts quickly moved in on Harvey and dived ahead under braking for the Island Hairpin on the fourth lap. ���The team made the car so good,��� said Danny, of his Irwin Tools-backed Red Line Racing squad, from Stockton on Tees, Cleveland. ���It was down to me then.��� However, having built a five-second lead, Watts saw it evaporate when the Safety Car was deployed at the start of lap eight.
Mark Cole (Inkpen, Berkshire) had made a great start to storm through to sixth place after starting tenth on the grid, and was challenging Richard Williams (Bromley-by-Bow, London) for fifth when contact with Jason Templeman (Nottingham) sent Cole into a spin at Island with a damaged wheel.
Once Cole���s car was clear of the track, the pack was released for one final lap of racing and Watts quickly went clear. However, Harvey spun out of second place at Cascades. ���I���d let my tyres cool down and I didn���t expect the race to restart as the 20 minutes had ended before we crossed the finish line,��� said Harvey.
In the end, the results were later confirmed at 20 minutes, which was at the end of the final Safety Car lap, and so Harvey was still classified second in the corrected results.
���I���m over the moon with that result,��� said Quaife (Tonbridge, Kent) after his best Carrera Cup finish to date in fourth overall and first in the Pro-Am category. ���I got a good start and then didn���t push too hard,��� he said. With Cole and Templeman out of the running, Williams was a secure fifth. ���I just stayed out of trouble,��� reckoned Williams after another strong result. Meanwhile, with a nicely controlled drive, Paul O���Neill (Widnes) brought the car entered by Porsche Cars GB in association with Vertu, the world���s first and only manufacturer of luxury handcrafted mobile phones, home in sixth place. ���I got my start all wrong, but after that I just kept it consistent and made up places. I���ll get a nose bleed starting that far up the grid for the second race,��� he joked.
Phil Hindley (Chester) took an excellent seventh ahead of Pro-Am podium finishers Mike Richards (Knutsford) and Sam Edwards (Aylesbury), while a strong performance from Mark Hazell (Gwent) was rewarded with a top 10 finish.
Provisional results (11 laps):
Race two
Watts clinched his second victory of the weekend by holding off fierce challenges from Harvey and Faulkner, while Quaife also took a weekend double in the Pro-Am category.
For much of the race the top three were covered by less than a second as Watts headed Faulkner and Harvey, and the three cars made a great sight as they raced neck and neck in front of a packed British Touring Car Championship crowd. Faulkner had dived ahead of Harvey on the opening lap, but Tim later got the place back with a tremendous overtaking move at Lodge corner on lap seven.
As Faulkner attacked Watts, Harvey saw his chance and jinked back inside Faulkner under braking. It was a fine move that put Harvey back onto the leader���s tail for the closing laps. ���It was a good ���touring car��� move,��� said Harvey after the race. However, he could not unseat Watts, who claimed a second triumph to complete a perfect weekend. ���To get two poles and two wins is fantastic. But Tim was always there and he was quicker than me in some parts of the lap.���
Faulkner was disappointed with third. ���I was pushing really hard, but later in the race I was getting more and more understeer,��� he reported. Although he had a relatively lonely race, Williams was a strong fourth to maintain his title challenge. He also earned the ���Driver of the Weekend��� award for two more excellent performances. ���I got the car off the line OK this time and I���m really pleased with the race results.���
Another driver with reason to celebrate was Quaife after completing a Pro-Am double. However, mid-race he came under pressure from Edwards and had to up his pace to retain his lead. ���I saw his lights in my mirror so I had to push again,��� said Quaife after chalking up his fourth Pro-Am win on the trot.
Edwards, meanwhile, was lucky even to finish after getting caught up in a clash off the start line. He was squeezed into the pit wall in an incident that launched Hindley���s Tech 9 car off the ground. Hindley was out on the spot along with Pete Osbourne (Worksop), O’Neill and Paul Hogarth (Knutsford), but Edwards managed to keep going, even with two damaged wheels and his steering knocked out of line.
Up from a lowly grid position, Cole did well to battle through to seventh, while Nigel Rice (Beverley, East Yorkshire) took the final Pro-Am podium position and fended off Templeman for eighth in the process.
Provisional results (18 laps):
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