What a fantastic opening weekend at Brands Hatch for the BRSCC Mazda MX-5 Championship and Super Series.
We started the weekend with six cars, unfortunately our 7th driver, Jack Brewer didn’t make it to Brands thanks to a van breakdown on route. Following an almost 24 hour wait for AA recovery it would be fair to say his racing spirit had been replaced by tiredness and grumpiness! It’s a real shame to of started the season this way, but we look forward to seeing Jack at the next round!
This left us with an even split, with three drivers running in each class. Joe, Marcus and Nick were at the wheels of the Mark One’s and Cam, Clive and Liz in the Mark Three’s. The weather conditions were fabulous and offered our first fully dry meeting in over a year! Yes that’s even considering last years scorcher of a heat wave, which managed to fall directly in the racing break, allowing the series to catch all the storms either side!
Qualifying was off to a superb start with the Mark One’s. Joe worked hard through the session to secure P3 whilst Marcus, being the first driver on the new Avon Tyre took P5, Nick was the second to run on the new tyre selection securing P15. The Mark Three’s struggled more, especially with the new tyre selection, something which would normally equate to better lap times had the opposite effect, so tyre set up is something we will be focussing on in our test days ahead of the next race weekend. Tucker Motorsport qualified with Clive in P10, Cam in P17 and Liz in P20.
The Mark One’s were the first to get a taste of the race action, Marcus got a fantastic start to get him on the back of the front pack, but in a terrible stroke of bad luck ended up retiring from the race as a rear bumper, lost from a car further up the pack ended up lodge under his front wheels! Joe and Nick, however, had a much more successful first race. Nick retained his spot in the A Race with a solid 25th finish, whilst Joe settled perfectly into MX-5 racing following a slightly slow start he finished on the pace bringing it home in 4th Position.
The Mark Three first race was much more fiery! Clive took full advantage of the chaotic track action and carved his way through the carnage to finish in 4th Position. Liz and Cam were also able to take advantage of the chaos on track and avoid getting caught in any cross fire to finish in 15th and 10th respectively.
Saturdays action finished in the early afternoon allowed us plenty of time to reset all vehicles ahead of Sundays packed calendar, and of course go for the all important team pub dinner!
On Sunday the Tucker Motorsport Mark One’s were split between the A and B races. The first race, race 2A, saw a perfect performance from Joe ‘Bosh’ Wiggins finishing fast and securing the first Tucker Motorsport podium of 2019. This was quickly followed by Marcus in race 2B who battled throughout the race for the win but just couldn’t get a grip on first, crossing the line in an impressive second place.
The Mark Three race continued the theme from Saturday, taking the misbehaving role firmly from the Mark One Grid! Unfortunately Cam and Clive were not so lucky on this occasion, getting caught in the chaos and leaving the Tucker Motorsport Support Team with a lot of work to do to get them out racing in the final run of the weekend.
Joe seemed to form a podium habit, again achieving a fantastic third position in the final Mark One race of the weekend, putting us nicely in place for a championship fight! Whilst you can’t win a championship at round one you can loose it, and we’re excited to see how the series unfolds as Joe becomes more established in the series.
Alongside the impressive performance of Joe, Marcus fought hard through the pack to finish in position 22, which was in fact position one for those running on the new Avon tyre. Whilst over in Race 3B Nick scored the Tucker Motorsport Team yet another podium finish, crossing the line in second.
The final race for the Mark Threes continued the fiery theme. Whilst Liz had a first ever DNF in 25 races, it was for all the right reasons, as she battled the field driving extraordinarily well chasing Clive, she lowered her PB at Brands a further 3 tenths of a second and really showed the grid her racing spirit.
All in all Brands brought us a good opening round and the winter of work provided some good results and highlighted the areas we need to work on ahead of the next round!
Tucker-Motorsport 