Exiles duo John Underwood and Jonathan White took a convincing victory in the RockBull Ring 6h race for DiSCA WEC cars.
The weekend’s preparations were somewhat mired by various issues for competing teams regarding available personnel, resulting in several last minute driver changes, transfers and car switching. Fortunately Exiles were one of the only teams unaffected by the various goings on pertaining to forming the grid, and raced away from around the ninety minute mark.
Sports Crazing took the pole position with a late-session hot lap from Gary Skipp, who fought with Underwood for the race lead throughout the first half hour of the race. By the time Skipp made a pit stop to hand over to Martin Thorpe around 40 minutes, the lead for Carazing was two laps.
Halfway into Thope’s stint an accident while lapping traffic send the Carazing Toyota TS050 head-on to the retaining wall, causing irrecoverable damage to the on-board digital chip. The car slowed and the team spent a shot time trying to diagnose the fault before leaving the track to replace the faulty component. Underwood resumed the lead before handing over to Jonathan White, and from there on they would hold their position at the front of the filed until the chequered flag.
The rest of the field swapped positions on the regular, one notable car climbing the ranks was the Slotit Oreca 07 of Dorest SCC, running in preparation for the upcoming 24 hours of Paul Ricard. Tom Ainscow, running with on-loan Dave Maddock and Lewis Gough, battled against every car in the field to come home second place after the six hours. Gas Monkeys started strong but also suffered a major incident which dropped them down the order with around one hour remaining.
Rockingham suffered car failure prior to the green flag and ended up racing a borrowed Lola, suffering their own early issues but recovering for a podium third. North Staffs also ran a loan car, enjoying their competitive position and running near the front of the field. The team, one of the longest running DiSCA competitors in the field, would finish just shy of Gas Monkeys after repairs to address a lighting failure. Unlucky Sports Carazing did manage a remarkable recovery to third place due to the issue befalling Gas Monkeys and Staffs, but had their car stop dead on turn two with just ten minutes remaining of the race. The Toyota was retired in what become its final race, after a massively successful couple of seasons in DiSCA WEC.
Focus now switched to next month’s 24 of Paul Ricard to be held at DSCA Mechelen.
