Newsletter 15 / 2009

Team “Cuisine de France / SPAR” take another podium at Oulton Park 4 hours.

Team “Cuisine de France / SPAR” raced to their third podium of the year at Oulton Park on Saturday in the fifth fourth round of the 2009 Fun Cup UK, in their TDI diesel car run by Solutions Racing.

Points are being calculated but its looks as if we are now leading the Championship by a slender few points, with just one race left.

Driven by Ian Connell, Richard Connell Marc Connell and Frenchman Franck Pelle, the team crossed the line after 4 hours just 13 seconds behind the winners Team Honeywell.

Qualifying
Ian did just three laps to qualify first, handing over to Richard who found the car handling better that in practice on Friday. He handed over the car with warm tyres and brakes to Marc Franck to set our fastest qualifying time, good enough for 2nd fastest overall behind Team Eclipse. Franck then ran the last few laps running in pads & tyres.

Job well done, we awaited the random grid draw with anticipation........but we drew a 26th place on the 30 car grid!

Race: 4 hours

Franck took the start and by the end of lap one was already up to 18th place, before handing over to Marc after 40 minutes in 15th place.

Marc settled down quickly putting in very good times to get up to 11th, while Richard continued the solid work by getting up to 8th at the half way point.

Second stints ran well taking us up to 5th place with one hour to go and thing looking good for a podium, but then we got a stop and go penalty for speeding in the pit lane. This dropped us back to 7th, but by the end of the race helped by some others also getting stops goes, Richard had got back up to 3rd overall, just 3 second behind Team Ram and 13 second behind the leaders.

Richard “Its great to get 3rd from so far back on the grid, but I am sure we could have won. At Island bend in my last stint, I gave a lapped competitor room on the inside; we went around the bend side by side, only for him to run me off the road on the exit. I lost the splitter and knocked the tracking out on the grass as a result ……I will know not to give them any room in the future!”

Connell racing videos on YOU TUBE
Oulton Park TV Coverage
Connell racing Videos have been posted from Oulton Park are now live with a 6 minute review of our race!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PHr-lPxecg

TV Coverage Sky Sports and Motors TV
The race will be televised on Sky Sports and Motors TV in a few weeks.
I will advise you of the transmission dates when I have them.

Team
Thanks to our engineer Stuart, plus Mike, Pete, Steve and all the Solutions Racing Team who did a fantastic job running and preparing the car on race day. Thanks also to Connell Racing crew members, Marvin who did our refueling and Mike and Emma who ran the race strategy from the pit wall.

Our Solutions racing Team mates had mixed fortunes with 248 CCS Media coming home in 12th place and 4th in the petrol class while 190 My Handle.Com (see photo below) had an eventful race with a non finish after a big shunt when they spun and were hit by Team Eclipse.

2009 Fun Cup Long Distance race dates to follow
14th November 2009 Snetterton (Norfolk) 6 Hours

Oulton Park You Tube videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PHr-lPxecg CdeF Race report

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XAotWHvjLY Grid walk / all cars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=negc5gKgkbw Solutions Team clips

Please watch, comment and rate!

Best wishes, Ian

http://www.connell-racing.co.uk/

From my (obviously slightly biased) point of view it looks like Sean (purveyor of the bad language) tried to go for a gap that was disappearing, instead of braking and trying to go round the back of the spinning 190 car...
he was way over to the right of the track, and the racing line is way over on the left