Brands Hatch - Round 9

The Friday test day showed this was not Ant's favourite circuit. The best he could achieve was midfield. He was not far off the pace and the field was very tightly packed as per usual but this didn’t hide the fact he was further off the front than he wanted to be. 

Qualifying was approached in a slightly different manor to normal in a bid to get further up the highly competitive field. Scragg decided to pit after 3 laps of qualifying to swap his tyres around hoping to get more from the car.  

Ant did put in his best time of the weekend so far in the short qualifying Session but still he was only around the midfield.  

Saturday's qualification race saw Ant jump from 14th to 9th on the first lap with some stunning over taking moves. He became under pressure from about lap 4 and showed terrific defence, flaunting his ability to put his car exactly in the right position. Scragg soaked up the pressure and kept the perusing car at bay until the very last lap where a brave lunge at paddock hill bend rewarded the chasing driver.  

Sunday was a very strange day in terms of racing. After one spinner on the green flag lap, there were a few cars involved in a first lap incident at paddock hill bend. Scragg was one of these cars. After another excellent start off the line he was collected by the spinning car of Andrew Jordan. The impact broke Scragg's rear axel and put him in to the deep gravel on the outside of the track. Somehow the FSR driver managed to regain control of the car and kept the revs up and drove it out of the gravel. A few moments later there was a huge accident at graham hill involving at least 3 cars. The race was at this point red flagged and the cars lined up on the grid while the recovery vehicles attended to the damaged cars.

Scragg had sustained bad damage and it was a wonder how he had even managed to drive it back to the start. It was at this point that the young driver had a look for himself how bad the damage was. It was clear he would not be competing in this race. He was pushed off the grid to his disgust.

However another spinning car on the green flag lap of the restart made the officials cancel the race and move it to the end of the day. This meant that his broken rear axel could now be fixed and if the mechanics could do it in time there was a chance he would get back out.  

The FSR team did an excellent job and managed to get the young local lad back out on track and he rewarded them with an unforgettable start. He rocketed from 22nd on the grid to 11th on the first lap! The Spa Hotel backed driver continued to make forward progress and ended up finishing 10th. An excellent result and a boost in confidence for the driver and the team. The first time all season FSR had two drivers in the top 10.