Continuing its run of a podium finish at every championship event, DVF Racing and Slidesports Engineering, supported by Pall-Ex left Snetterton firmly in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB title hunt.
Starting the weekend under scorching summer temperatures for Friday’s practice, the weather soon deteriorated for Sunday’s two races, held in wet and windy conditions, which made setting the cars up difficult for the field. Cypriot Tio Ellinas, competing in the Pro category, secured pole position on Saturday with a lap time almost three-tenths of a second faster than rival Dino Zamparelli. However, in the rain on Sunday the team had to gamble on tyre pressures, which left Tio with an ill-handling car, and he had to battle for a podium finish in race one and fifth place in race two.
Reflecting on the weekend, Tio said; “Friday and Saturday were really positive, and I qualified P1. Unfortunately, we messed up a bit in race one as the tyre pressures were a bit too low for the wet setup we had. We gambled in race one as we thought it would dry up and we didn’t want to overheat the tyres but unfortunately it rained more, and it was a bit difficult” he added.
It’s a frustrating weekend as we had the pace, but we have to manage the car in the race on long runs. We'll regroup as a team and go again next time and build on the positives from this weekend as we know we have the speed."
Similarly, both David Fairbrother and Richard Hawken, competing in the Am category, struggled to get on top of the car in the unpredictable conditions. Yorkshireman David battled to two sixth-place finishes. Richard had a good tussle in race one, just missing a podium, but was tapped into a spin in race two and pushed his tyres too hard catching the pack back up.
David said; “We had good pace in testing and the times were good in practice on Friday but come qualifying we were struggling again. We tried to get on top of things when the weather changed on Sunday, but the pace just wasn’t there.
“We’ll regroup and go again at Knockhill. We’ve got the chance to test up there on the Wednesday, so we can dial the car in and then press on for the races. We aren’t far off, but these cars respond to small changes and it can make or break your weekend, so we just have to refine things slightly to hit that perfect spot and we’ll be fine.” DVF Racing will next be on track in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB at Knockhill in Scotland over August 24-26 where it will try to retake top spot in the standings.
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