Mark Musgrove leads Schumacher to victory at the West London GP 2013

 

This past weekend was the West London GP 2013 sponsored by Schumacher Racing.

With 88 Drivers competing at this event it was going to be a great weekend, the only thing that could have spoilt it was the great British Summertime weather!

  

The weather forecast leading up to this event was very uncertain, with the possibility of heavy rain arriving over the weekend.
On the Saturday morning all drivers arrived at the track and started setting up their pit area and gazebo, we noticed many sides being put on the gazebos due to the dark clouds looming above the circuit and also the strong winds that were present.

  

Drivers briefing was called, which everyone attended and Pete Tims and Schumacher's Mark Musgrove explained what the format was for the weekend and all the relevant information that the drivers would need.

  

The race format to be used was 5 rounds of qualifying with the best 3 rounds to count, and then 3 leg finals for everybody with the best 2 final results counting towards the overall finishing position.

  

Also it was announced to everyone that there would be 2 rounds of practice in heat order on Saturday, followed by 3 qualifying rounds. Then on the Sunday there would be 1 further round of practice first thing, followed by 2 more qualifying rounds and then moving on to the finals.

  

During practice the drivers had to get their tyres marked up at scruineering as 3 sets of the Sorex 32 slicks were allowed for the event.

  

Practice ran smoothly with just a few drops of rain towards the end, then a huge downpour just before the start of qualifying.
Moving into qualifying mode, this saw many drivers deciding to race their prepared wet cars with good waterproofing due to the rain and the puddles that had formed on the circuit. There were some mixed results after round 1 of qualifying due to the weather as you can imagine.

  

After round 1 the track started to dry and we was extremely fortunate to not get anymore rain during the day, the earlier heats of round 2 saw drivers having to choose between wet tyres or slicks due to the mixed track conditions.
Once the 3 qualifying runs were finished on the saturday the top 5 in each class overnight looked like this:

17.5T Blinky
1 Dominic Skinner
2 Malc Hall
3 Les Baldry
4 Mark Bristow
5 Paul Northam

13.5T Open
1 Zak Finlay
2 Mark Musgrove
3 Damian Giddins
4 Lee Price
5 Mark Buonaiuto

Modified
1 Olly Jefferies
2 Ashley Wiffen
3 Chris Grainger
4 Paul Pinkney
5 Colin Price

However still all to play for Sunday morning as remember there were 2 more rounds of qualifying to take place and a lot could change.

Qualifying took place once again in the dry and we was lucky enough to have a virtually dry day of racing apart from the occasional very light shower but not enough to wet the track in a huge way.

With all 5 rounds of qualifying over the top 10 in each class was as follows:

  

17.5T Blinky
1 Dominic Skinner
2 Malc Hall
3 Gavin Clinch
4 Les Baldry
5 Terry Yarranton
6 Mark Passingham
7 David Clift
8 Mark Bristow
9 Mark Townsend
10 Dani Young

13.5T Open
1 Mark Musgrove
2 Tony Broad
3 Richard King
4 Damian Giddins
5 Zak Finlay
6 Lee Price
7 Mark Buonaiuto
8 Daniel Booker
9 Tom Jefferies
10 Tim Langdell

Modified
1 Chris Grainger
2 Elliott Harper
3 Olly Jefferies
4 Ashley Wiffen
5 Paul Pinkney
6 James Hart
7 Colin Price
8 Brian Eldridge
9 Andy Murray
10 Alex Brocklebank

So next followed the 3 leg finals for everyone and everyone got to enjoy the awesome commentary skills from Mr Kris Kennedy, very entertaining as always!

After all 3 finals and some great racing and overtaking skills by some drivers the A final from each class finished as below:
 
 



After the finals were over, there was a trophy presentation for the top 3 in each class and also for TQ in each class.
Then there was the traditional raffle which is held at the GP and all money going to a charity of the clubs choice.
There were over £500 worth of prizes kindly donated for the raffle from Schumacher Racing, also prizes were donated by the shops that attended the event, so a huge thankyou to you guys also. 

 

Schumacher also supplied a nice Thermo drinks Mug to one lucky driver from each final which was drawn at random.
Congratulaions to all of you that was lucky enough to win a raffle prize.
 
 
So what a great event this turned out to be once again, a massive thanks to all of the organisers and scrutineers of this event, a special mention to Pete Tims, Paul Canham and Kris Kennedy for all of your input over the weekend, great work guys!
 
Finally, the next big race event at this West London race track is Round 3 of the Schumacher BTCC on Sunday 7th July 2013, if you want to race then please get yourself booked in asap as spaces are still available at: www.centralbooking.org

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