Speedsport Stars Shine at Silverstone!!
Jul 26th, 2010
Speedsport drivers Callum Macleod and Stefan Hodgetts both starred at the prestigious Silverstone Classic race meeting on the weekend.
Stefan completely dominated in the Trofeo Formula Arbarth 500 championship. He claimed pole position by a staggering1.4 seconds from championship leader Ben Winrow and converted this into 2 wins and fastest laps and a new lap record.
Stefan made a great to keep the lead and then never looked back. He had established a good lead and was set for an easy ride home when suddenly the heavens opened. Unfortunately for his rivals Stefan was able to demonstrate his superb car control and pull away from the pack at an even faster rate to secure the victory.
Race 2 was even more dominant for Stef, another great opening lap saw him head the pack by well over a second at the end of lap one and he continued to pull away to eventually win by over 7 seconds.
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Callum's weekend was not quite as straight forward. Damper problems in qualifying left Callum P2 on the grid and Pole in class. The Richard Utley owned Speedsport prepared Caravelle MKII Callum was racing has a 4 speed gear box and drum brakes opposed to the 5 speed boxes and disc brakes of the usual front running cars.
Despite this, Callum is only interested in overall victory. The compromise in gears for the 4 speed box means that starts are always going to be a struggle with a longer first gear. Callum dropped to 3rd at the start but chased the 2nd place car of Hibberd and made the pass into Stowe. Callum held 2nd until the last lap when unfortunately gearbox problems brought and end to his race before the chequered flag.
Race 2 will go down as one of the Classic meetings' most exciting races ever. Again Callum dropped down at the start, exiting copse in 4th. Callum made his way past Urs Uberhart for 3rd place on the way into club corner. Still struggling with a less than perfect gear box Callum was 6 seconds down on the leaders by lap 3.
However as the race wore on the Caravelle came into its stride and a string of fastest laps saw Callum close up on 2nd place Hibberd and pass him into Priory. Callum then chased down race 1 winner Milcevic. Callum used the backmarkers to his advantage and swept around the outside of 2 backmarkers and Milcevic at Club corner. Such was the straight line speed advantage of Milcevic's 5 speed Cooper that Callum had to defend at every straight and be very brave on the brakes to hold the lead. On the run up to the Finish line the two were side by side and the Callum was judged to have won by an inch.
This result however was reversed when the transponder timings were printed showing that Milcevic had won by 3 hundreths or a second, largely believed to be down to the positioning of the trasponder in the car. Despite losing the win, the performance of the unfancied drum brake Caravelle against the might of the period winning Coopers was nothing short of outstanding.
