2013-12-09 09:17:19.2
Eddie’s bad luck in the Open Championship continued yesterday as he suffered brake failure while battling for the lead. With most of the Avit Racing team competing in the Teesside 24 Hour race, Eddie found a berth with Rob Hazell’s team who he also raced for in the Elite race in the morning.
Elite Endurance
A small grid of 16 of the BPKDC’s elite teams lined up for round 4 of the championship. Eddie qualified 11th with the entire field separated by eight tenths of a second.
Eddie started the race and slowly moved his way up the field before handing over to Johnny Hazell. Dan Vary did a double stint in the middle before Eddie and Johnny did the last 2 stints. Despite a spin from Vary during his stint, the trio all drove sensibly to hold on to 7th position at the finish. Eddie enjoyed his outing.
“It was a fairly good result all things considered. I thought they guys did a great job and thanks again to Rob for giving me the opportunity to join his team.
I was happy with my performance. I especially enjoyed my second stint where I managed to catch and pass Simon Rudd in a straight fight. I’ve competed against him before at Le Mans a couple of years ago and in the one Elite Sprint I did but I’ve never been on the same bit of track. He is the sort of ‘Marc Craddock’ of the BPKDC so it’s nice to know I can be up there.”
Open Endurance
There was no rest for Eddie and the team as practice for the Open race started almost as soon as the Elite event had finished. Eddie once again qualified and put the team 5th on the 28 strong grid. He made a good start to jump straight into second off the line but a small mistake at the second hairpin dropped him to third. He soon clawed his way up into the lead and then enjoyed a fierce battle with Matt Brookes from Teamcraft.
The impressive run at the front would end soon after when his brakes failed going into the first hairpin and forcing him to run down an escape road. The team lost several laps as Eddie crawled round slowly for another lap and then had to take a spare kart. This cost the team several laps and dropped them to the tail of the field.
This disaster was compounded when they missed the opportunity to refuel and had to come in again a few laps later, only for Toby Newton to miss the signal meaning the team missed the pit window and had to serve a 40 second penalty.
Nevertheless, the trio of Hall, Newton and Johnny Hazell had a great comeback drive to eventually finish 10th. Eddie talked about his brake failure.
“It was disappointing for the guys because we were doing so well. It was nice to be leading again and I was having a bit of fun with ‘Basher’ Brookes. Sadly the brakes just completely went going into hairpin one and I had no option but to take the cut-through. I was still going too fast to make the pit lane entrance so I had to do another lap at a painfully slow speed. I still had to crash into the tyre wall in the pitlane to get the thing to stop.
It’s such a shame because with that, the extra stop and the penalty, we lost a certain podium finish today. Still, the team did a great job and it was an enjoyable race.”
Eddie will be in action again next week at the Clay Pigeon circuit.
