Brands Hatch frustration for Abra
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
After missing
the previous two rounds JCAM backed paring of Mark Poole and Richard Abra
returned to the Aston Martin GT4 Challenge raring to get back racing after
their strong run last time out at Donington which saw them finish on the
podium.
Richard Abra
was again chosen to qualify the car in the 40 minute session. “Qualifying
started off damp we knew the circuit would dry out so we waiting till half way
through the sessions were it looked like the circuit was dry enough to put a
quick lap in but it wasn’t to be, we went out too soon and just took the best
out of the tyres pushing too hard on what realistically wasn’t the best
conditions the session would see” said Abra “I pushed as hard as I could
towards the end of the session and put in a 50.2 which was provisional pole but
then as now the track was completely dry everyone else decided to put fresh
tyres on and we and inevitably Dan went quickest on a 49.8 I said to the guys
on the radio I just cannot do that time on these tyres, so instead on using 3 sets of new tyres just
for qualifying like others, we decided to settled for 2nd on the
grid.”
Sunday would
see Richard Abra starting the JCAM backed car for the 90min endurance race
round the Brands Hatch Indy circuit. Starting second Abra made a good start but
lost out to into the first corner and had to settle for third. “I had a great
start and was slightly ahead of Dan going into paddock but unsure of tyre temp
and grip levels I decided to break early, in doing that I had to tuck in behind
the Stratton car who was right on the tale of Dan! I stayed cool and calm,
trying not to push too hard on new cold tyres and just took my time bringing
them up to temp, I could see the Stratton car being very aggressive in trying to
pass Dan and knew he would kill his tires in no time”
By lap 4
Richard was confident that he had the grip under him to challenge the second
placed Stratton car “I felt the car was fully up to temperature and started to
push on, putting the Stratton car under pressure, knowing that Dan was slowly
starting to pull away in the lead I knew I had to get past quickly luckily the
Stratton car made a mistake going into druids and leaving the door wide open
for me, I didn’t need a second invitation!”
By this stage
Dan de Zille had pulled out a 2 second gap which Abra set about closed down in
3 laps. “I really started to push and the car felt great I remember telling the
team that the car had never felt as good as this in a race! I quickly caught
Dan up and he was having a lot of trouble at Surtees and turning into
clearways, leaving the door wide open for me, it took a couple of tries but
eventually I went through and started to pull a bit of a gap, unfortunately at
this time we had started to lap the slower guys and had to deal with the
traffic, so every time I would pull a 3 second gap it would be reduced to 1.5
seconds! The car was feeling great and
at the end of my stint we were 3 seconds in the lead”
Abra pitted
the on lap 53 to hand over to team mate Mark Poole after maintaining the lead which he’d taken from Dan
de Zille some 46 laps earlier. “I came in to hand over to my team mate to
finish of the race who unfortunately only managed two corners as he suffered
total brake failure going into druids. Mark did a great job of turning into the
corner and scrubbing off enough speed not to hit the barrier but he was beached
in the gravel and that was the end of the race for us! The team are
investigating what and why this happened to ensure it doesn’t happen again but
it looks like the brake fluid boiled in the pit land causing the pedal to go
soft as I didn’t have any brake issues at all.”
“It was
massively frustrating to retire while leading obviously we were heading for a
very strong result and the car had never felt better, but that’s racing...”