1 August 2009

A Flying Visit For A Home Race

Ryan and Derrick jumped at a last minute chance to compete on home soil when they took part in the latest round of the UK SPEED Championship which visited Brands Hatch on 1 August.

Fresh from their podium finish in Lausitz in their main series this year, the Eruopean VdeV Championship, it was a welcome busman's holiday to compete in the UK.

With no time for testing, it was straight into qualifying and 8th on the grid. Ryan started the 3 Hour race - and what a start! Ryan was up to 6th by the first corner and 3rd by the end of the first lap! It didn't take many more tours for Ryan to hunt down and pass Bialan and Doran to take the lead.

Once at the head of the pack Ryan drew out a massive 15 second lead but with incidents elsewhere the safety car was called out and the gap voided. Once the safety car was in, it was time for Ryan to pull out another double figure lead...only for the safety car to be back out and cancel it. And repeat, and repeat!

Towards the end of Ryan's stint there were the first signs that the British summertime was going to play its usual unpredictability card with drizzle falling on parts of the circuit. Staying on slicks the weather lightened again and Ryan handed over to Derrick who settled in 3rd after the melee of pit stops and odd weather. A shame about all those safety cars as without them Ryan could have handed over a whopping 80 second lead!

Derrick put in a good stint, again punctuated by the safety car, and looked set for a good finish. But, the weather decided to play tricks once more and heavy rainfall say Derrick spin out from a fine 5th place. But, not to be dishearted, the team showed great pace in their first ever SPEED event and showed they were easily podium contenders.

"It was fun to race so close to home again" said Ryan afterwards, "and perhaps we surprised a few people by coming in so strong on our first SPEED attempt. Obviously our main focus is VdeV this year but if schedules allow it would be great fun to have some more UK races - even if the weather is dodgier than we've been blessed with in our European races!"

You can catch coverage of the Brands event on Motors TV on

Wednesday 5th August 10.55pm

Friday 14th August 7.05pm

Sunday 16th August 10.55pm

Monday 17th August 11am

Ryan and Derrick are back in action on 29-30th August in the VdeV at Dijon, France.

Visit our Brands Hatch gallery here.