Race Season
Results
BTCC | June 2007
Friday's test day was split in to two 20 minute sessions. Rain started to fall about 15 minutes in to the first session, so Ant decided to return to the pits rather than battle away on a greasy track with slick tyres on. However an incident during the second session saw the test cut short when it was red flagged. A total of 15 laps had been completed by the FSR driver which was not ideal.
Saturday saw the 40 car field up bright and early and on track qualifying at 8.30am. The track was more or less dry but everyone knew that rain was never far away. Ant was at one point in 6th place but as other drivers managed to find some empty space on the track for their flying lap, Scragg did not improve his time. A final qualifying position of 12th had been earned, immediately in front of both his team mates Ciaran and Zorba.
The race was scheduled for 7 laps which didn’t mean there was a lot of time for overtaking, however Ant managed to jump up one space and finish 11th in what was a rather tepid race by modern Clio standards.
Sunday saw the 32 driver grid all confused as to what direction to go in terms of tyre. It had just rained heavily and the track was still wet, but it appeared to be drying fast. But rain was expected. Scragg and the majority of the drivers opted to go with wet weather tyres.
Ant started 21st and got too much wheel spin off the line and was fighting for traction for what seemed an eternity. He finally got the car moving and had lost a couple of positions. An aggressive opening lap from scragg saw him make them both up at the hairpin. Scragg was now pushing a pack of three up the hill towards the "knickerbrook chicane". The trio of Taylor, Benham and Smith were all side by side and something had to give. Unfortunately it was Alan Taylor who suffered a big coming together with the tyre wall on the inside of the track. Somehow Scragg managed to avoid being collected by the Spinning 'Robertshaw racing' car.
Due to this incident there was a safety car deployed for a massive 5 laps! Scragg was just as perplexed, by the length of time needed to clear the abandoned car, as the other drivers. The Youngster from Kent was now fighting for position with the one driver he didn't want to be doing that with...Aaron Smith.
Although Scragg's lap times were consistently half a second faster than the trio of Benham, Herron, and Smith he was struggling to find a way past as they were so tightly locked together. Scragg made a lunge down the outside of all three in to the very tight hairpin and actually got alongside them on the exit, but he was forced to back out as the Irishman made it very clear that he was not afraid of more contact, even after what happened at croft.
On the final lap Smith got a good drive out of the chicane to get alongside Andrew Herron, Scragg could see Herron would not be able to defend his line in to the corner so the FSR boy snuck up the inside too. Much to the annoyance of Herron. Proof of this being on Ant's drivers door..
Scragg's pace was visible again this weekend whilst claiming 18th and he collected a few points to add to his tally, but now his goal is to try to distance himself from the dog fight in the midfield and try to cling on to the sharp end of the pack..
