Tandy Wins Final Round, Sutton Secures Title
Nick Tandy won the final race of the season at Silverstone after a dominant display to complete a double victory and collect maximum points from the weekend. James Sutton finished a distant second to secure the championship title for the second time in his career.
Tandy made a good start to lead the pack into Copse while Sutton maintained second from Meadows who was forced to slot into third. While Tandy pulled away Sutton had to defend vigorously from a spirited attack from Meadows over the opening laps. By lap five though, Meadows began to suffer the consequences of pushing too hard in the early stages as one of his tyres developed a slow puncture. This allowed Sutton breathing space.
Further back, contact between Euan Hankey, Rory Butcher and Sam Tordoff allowed Stephen Jelley to move up the field from ninth to sixth. Butcher and Hankey were forced to retire while Tordoff dropped down to 19th position.
Jelley’s charge continued when he followed Jonas Gelzinis past Ben Hetherington before overtaking the Juta Racing driver for fourth. This
put him on the tail of the struggling Meadows for the second time in two races. Unfortunately a similar outcome to the first race occurred as Jelley tried another ambitious overtake and struck the rear of Meadows’ car which sent him spinning down to seventh. Meadows himself then suffered a spin five laps later which dropped him behind Jelley, the spin was caused by the puncture and this meant he had to pit for a change of tyres, this dropped him out of the points and barring any late misfortune for Sutton meant his title hopes had vanished.
At the front, Tandy took advantage of a cautious performance from Sutton to extend his lead to 16 seconds as he took the chequered flag; a convincing margin of victory.
Speaking to BTCC Crazy, he said: “It was the perfect race to finish it (the weekend) which was a good thing. It’s great for me to have a couple of wins. The car was super and it’s all credit to everybody at Motorbase.”
Sutton finished in a comfortable second position which made him the third driver in the championship’s history to become a double champion
as he added to his 2007 triumph.
Speaking to BTCC Crazy, he said: “I feel kind of numb and in a bit of a dream state at the moment. It’s amazing especially how hard it’s been this year it’s definitely for me been harder than it was in 2007. Mike Meadows has been a fantastic competitor this year. He’s been so consistent and so quick; he’s pummelled me in qualifying this year and for him to lose the championship in that manner I feel a little bit sorry for him. To come out number one against the likes of Mike and Stephen Jelley with the way he’s performed this year and Euan Hankey who has been ballistic at times, is a very very satisfying feeling and I’m very proud of all the work we’ve done.”
Behind Sutton an intense battle for third raged in the closing stages and it was Redline’s Ben Hetherington who held on to claim the final podium position, his first visit to the rostrum this year.
Speaking to BTCC Crazy he said: “It’s been a great year and to finish it with a podium is fantastic and it just shows all the hard work the team have done, all the hard work I’ve done and everything I’ve learnt. It was by no means a given, I had to work really hard for that one but it was all nice and fair, I really enjoyed it.”
Richard Plant finished fourth after a gutsy drive from tenth on the grid and could count himself a little unlucky not to collect a podium as
that would have been a just reward for the performance he delivered. Jonas Gelzinis was fifth overall and completed another double Pro-Am1 victory, with Stephen Jelley sixth, only a second adrift of third place man Hetherington at the flag.
George Richardson was an excellent seventh overall and second in Pro-Am1 ahead of Ahmad Al Harthy who was next on the road and next in
class.
Michael Leonard finished the season with a top ten finish in ninth ahead of Sam Tordoff who recovered from his spin to finish tenth.
In Pro-Am2 Keith Webster took victory but it wasn’t enough to deliver him the title as Celtic Speed’s George Brewster battled back from an
early spin to finish fourth in class which was enough to give him the championship by five points. Steve Parish and Richard Denny separated the pair in the race order.
Michael Meadows rejoined the track among the Pro-Am2 runners after his pit stop, finishing the race 17th overall and out of the points. After the race he reflected on a good season and paid tribute to Sutton.
Speaking to BTCC Crazy, he said: “It’s been a great year. I feel like I’ve driven well. I’ve been very fast all year, me and James have pushed each other really hard. Without each other we probably wouldn’t have won the championship (Sutton as a driver for SAS/Redline and the team in winning the teams’ championship). Congratulations to him (Sutton) he did a great job all year, he had one slip up at the Nurburgring and that was it really apart from that he’s been on the podium probably fifteen of the nineteen races (fourteen). The champion generally deserves to be champion and that’s the case again this year. I pushed him as hard as I could, there wasn’t much to choose between us all year in terms of pace, we shared everything we had and pushed each other all the way and it worked out very well in the end. Unfortunately someone has to lose the championship and because I was behind I had to be the one doing the chasing and when you’re chasing you have to over commit yourself and (bad) things happen. Hopefully next year we can stop him becoming a three time champion.”
For the full race classification see here: http://tsl-timing.com/toca/2011/114103por.pdf
For the final championship standings see here: http://www.porsche.com/uk/motorsportandevents/motorsport/racing/porschecarreracupgreatbritain/standingsandresults/
Thomas Surgay
