News

7th August @ Rockingham

CHARACTER BUILDING WEEKEND FOR CATCHPOLE

Mechanical maladies once again plagued Team Catchpole for rounds seven and eight of the SCSA Championship at Rockingham. The Corby based team were aided by rivals and neighbours Team West Tec and Torquespeed as they strive to get back onto their usual pace.

Phil Weaver (Southampton) managed 71 laps during Saturday's free practice, as he attempted to sort his car for qualifying. His best lap of 37.523secs was to be his best of the day, after dropping 0.4 secs in official qualifying for 13th on the starting grid.

"We continued to have back axle problems, and both West Tec and Torquespeed helped us with advice to change the axle. We have to start from the back of the grid too, after breaking the official seal and we didn't get chance to run the car before the first race," said Weaver.

There were problems from the start of the race, with the 77 car heading for the pitlane before the green flag had given the start. "It was one of the hardest cars I have ever driven, there is something seriously wrong with the handling," said Phil.

He rejoined the race later and completed 41 of the 60 laps to be classified 13th, leaving the team with frantic work to ready the car for race two.

Running steadily just outside the top ten, race two began to look promising. But then a multiple shunt caused the race to be red flagged and the cars were held in the pitlane. At the beginning of the 30 lap restart, Weaver immediately dived off to the pit apron."The diff had seized up again and blew into a thousand pieces, it's another disaster. I think it must be overheating as the car was still a real handful," he explained.

So it was game over for the Catchpole squad and without a lap completed they were unclassified.

Issued by Peter Scherer for Team Catchpole August 8th, 2005. Contact 01332 362577/07802 853244 or peter@scher.freeserve.co.uk