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Mixed Weekend For Spirit Racing As It Makes Maiden Victory |
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Monday, 07 May 2007 |
 The Spirit Racing team chalked up its first ever race victory at the Val de Vienne circuit in France at the weekend, as Simon Phillips and Rob Garofall triumphed in the latest round of the VdeV European series.
The Spirit Motor Group backed squad went into the second round of the endurance racing championship in good form, following a successful two-day test at Pembrey in Wales. The hard work prior to the French event seemed to have paid off in free practice, with both cars at the sharp end of the timesheets.
However, a change to the VdeV regulations over the course of the
weekend meant that the team was initially put onto the back foot in
qualifying. A change in the engine rev limit meant that a gear ratio
change affected the speed of the Jamie and Adam Derbyshire car, putting
them 21st out of the 41 car grid.
Meanwhile, team-mates Garofall managed to put his and Phillips’ car
onto pole position for the second race in succession, giving the team
another chance to shine over the three hour race on Sunday.
The Derbyshire brother’s car was later diagnosed with a slight engine
issue too, meaning that they were losing valuable mid-range torque
around the twisting Val de Vienne circuit.
At the start of the race Simon Phillips took a cautious approach,
dropping back a handful of places, sticking to his and Rob’s plan of
keeping themselves out of trouble and hopefully taking advantage of the
expected safety car periods in the opening half of the race.
Adam Derbyshire, meanwhile, was forced to take to the pits early in the
race with an alternator problem, which dropped him to 38th place by the
time he was able to rejoin the action. A fantastic drive allowed him to
claim back 15 places, though, before he was caught out when lapping a
back-marker and had to travel across one of the gravel traps.
Although he was able to get the car back to the pit lane the damage to
the Norma chassis was too much and the team was reluctantly forced to
retire the car from the second race in a row.
After just over an hour, Simon Phillips pitted to hand over the car to
Garofall, after expertly taking advantage of two safety car periods and
several accident by other racers to be just 30 seconds down on the
leader. After he took over, Rob managed to move into the lead of the
race at the two-hour mark and had a healthy 30 second lead as the
chequered flag fell, giving the team its first victory on only its
second ever event and Phillips’ his first ever outright race win.
“We’re so happy with that result,” said Phillips. “From a team point of
view it was obviously a mixed weekend, but to take two pole positions
and a race win after just two events proves that we’re doing the right
things. I feel sorry for Jamie and Adam as they were going so well
early in the weekend and they seem to have picked up all the bad luck
so far.”
“I think another couple of days testing, perhaps doing a couple of race
distances to really work out the cars and any other small problems will
finally get both cars onto the podium. There’s certainly no reason why
they shouldn’t be,” he added.
“We just went out with a plan for the whole race and stuck to it,”
added Garofall. “Fortunately for us it worked out to perfection this
time. We thought that there would be plenty of incidents early in the
race and we’d decided that Simon ought to star and keep out of trouble
and see how the race unfolded.”
“To have that plan and have it work out for the race win makes it all
the sweeter for the team too. It’s certainly nice to see the hard work
put in by the lads in the workshop coming to fruition out on the track.
We expected strong results for Spirit Racing, but maybe not this
early,” he said.
The team now has a three week break before it goes out to Magny-Cours in France or round three of the series.
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