At the wheel of the Tete Rouge 1 machine in the 2009 Professional MotorSport World Expo 24hr 2CV race at Snetterton, perennial front-runners Sammie Fritchley and David O’Keeffe were bidding for their first round-the-clock success. The pressure was on the third member of the team, Phil Myatt as he reeled off the final laps, but Myatt made no mistakes and brought the car home to victory. Indeed, other results meant that Myatt leapt up from tenth in the points to scoop back-to-back titles at the end of a dramatic race.
The crew had dropped to the fringes of the top 15 after an early engine oil leak persuaded the team to change the motor completely, rather than risk a five-lap penalty for being stranded out on the circuit and requiring a tow back to the pits. Once that was completed at 22:00 on Saturday, it was the last major problem the crew would have and it was up to them to hunt the others down.
They managed to do that successfully, despite the fact that the race was suspended for nearly six hours between 03:00 and 09:00 when a heavy fog clouded the track. That cut down on the crew’s recovery time, but they established themselves at the head of the pack before 12:00 on Sunday and remained there to the flag.
While virtually all of the leading crews had struck major problems at various stages, including the Professional MotorSport World Expo-sponsored Tete Rouge 2 car (see below), the Green Electrician team managed to plug away without the concerns of the other teams. The car was handled well by Simon Pearson, Paul Taylor, Mike Storey and Matt Riley and its consistent pace hauled it into second place.
That was only secured in the last two hours of the race when 2008’s winning and 2009 pole-sitting Team Gadget Racing entry struck trouble. After a delay in the dark when the lights system needed attention, the team had established itself back inside the top three as the race drew to a close. But with less than 90 minutes to go, driver Ainslie Bousfield was forced to pull into the pits with a dead engine. The five laps lost during the engine change were enough to demote the squad to fifth position at the flag.
One of the heroes of the race was Ginetta G50 racer Carl Breeze. The Team Fine Print car struggled in practice but some of it was self-induced. As a joke for fellow competitors, Team Fine Print’s car was fitted with a fake Brawn GP-style twin-deck diffuser at the rear. The joke backfired when they forgot to remove it when the car was scrutinized and they were kicked out after another team protested!
That meant Breeze, teamed with Martin Harrold, Edd Straw and Said Baloui, was way down the grid. He scorched from 20th on the grid to the top 10 after only three laps and continued his amazing pace. A strong stint by Straw in the night capitalized on Breeze’s work, but handling problems meant the car was a regular pit visitor in the early hours of the morning. Fourth place seemed on the cards until Gadget’s late problems.
Along with Gadget, another hard luck story was Team Stinky. A perfect run over the opening half of the race had put them in within striking distance of a maiden win, but the four-driver crew’s dreams blew apart when their trusted engine, nicknamed Kermit, let them down as the race entered its second half. Their comeback to seventh was an unjust reflection on their pace.
An unexpected electrical problem put paid to the Professional MotorSport World Expo-backed Citroën 2CV’s chances at Snetterton.
Having moved into the lead of the race in the third hour, and cemented a full lap’s lead on the field in the following two hours, the Tete Rouge Racing-run machine was sidelined for 55 minutes by an electrical problem caused by the wiring loom rubbing on the alternator.
The lengthy pitstop dropped the team down to 24th position, but the driver line-up of Carrera Cup GB racer Lewis Hopkins, Caterham Roadsports race-winner Graham Johnson, Clio Cup UK front-runner Mike Robinson, and 2CV regular and PMW Expo founder Tony Robinson, hauled the car back up to 14th by the finish, despite the race being stopped for six hours in the night when fog descended on the Norfolk track.
There was some consolation for the PMW Expo crew from teammates Tete Rouge 1 taking victory in the race when it finished at 17:30 on the Sunday.
Images courtesy of Maria Cooke and Simon Edmands
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