Silverstone Future Classics
Future Classic Joy
3rd October 2011
Ryan's third outing with James Neal in the Porsche 964 at Silverstone turned out to be the best of the races they've done together this year.
James had tested the car a few weeks prior to get a feeling for the car with the new modifications that had been made and to do a little set - up work on the car, he fed this information into Ryan before qualifying which obviously helped as Ryan qualified 2nd in class and 8th overall out of the 33 car field.
The conditions were very up and down throughout the day, and even though the race was going to be dry at the start, both Ryan and James knew there would be some rain towards the end of the race.
Ryan started the 40 minute race and made a fantastic start moving from 8th to 3rd by the first corner, and believes could have even led the race if he hadnt been blocked, such the good traction he was able to achieve off the line.
It only took another lap for him to move up to 2nd position and then slowly start to close the gap to the more powerful Porsche 928 and begin a battle for the lead of the race. Both cars were in different classes and its very rare for a class D car ( Ryan & James's Porsche ) to be battling for an overall result.
Ryan took the lead when the Porsche 928 pitted and then set about putting in very solid lap times to try and build the biggest possible gap to help when handing the car over to James to hopefully bring home in a great position.
The pit stop went smoothly and once everything had settled down the number 11 Porsche had a 29 second lead over the faster 2nd placed Porsche and with 15 minutes to go the heavens opened with torrential rain and the gap was coming down 3 seconds a lap, to set up a nail biting finish.
Ryan and the team were watching the timing screen each lap and knew it would be very close at the end, even a possible battle on the final lap - but James managed to keep his head and bring the car over the line with just a 1 second lead to win the class and the race overall - a fabulous achievement between the two drivers.
Ryan is out racing again next weekend with round 6 of the european vdev championship at the Nogaro circuit in France.