News Archive » The Dream Result

By Lindsay Morle
May 13, 2005, 17:00

Magny Cours British GT Report, 1 May 2005

Scuderia Ecosse took a resounding ‘one-two’ victory at Magny Cours today; the Kinch/Kirkaldy Ferrari took the win, closely followed by the Mullen/Niarchos car. This makes it two out of two for the team in its 2005 British GT Championship campaign.

The Kinch/Kirkaldy car also finished on the podium in the FIA GT2 class, which means the young Scots actually took two great results today. Andrew Kirkaldy explains: “We hoped to keep up with the (GruppeM) Porsches but it was clear from the start that wouldn’t be the case as we were running to different regulations. It’s not really disappointing though as they are a factory team and we were here to concentrate 100% on winning the British GT Championship; anything extra is a bonus! We had a fuel pick-up problem all weekend and I want to say thanks to the team for a couple of very late nights while they fixed the problem. When we went out for the warm up session this morning the entire team had their fingers crossed and luckily it was good news. I had a heart-stopping moment though in the race when the problem came back five laps before the end but we made it!”

Nathan Kinch continues: “I had a great race today; it was a case of getting my head down and putting in a good stint after Andrew did the first hour. It’s good to be back on the FIA GT podium but as Andrew says we’re here for the British GT Championship; we’ve had two wins from two rounds so we can’t have hoped for a better start than that. Our next race is on home turf at Knockhill so we’ll be delighted if we can keep the momentum going for the Scottish fans.

Chris Niarchos is pleased to take a step further up the podium after a third place in the opening round at Donington Park. “Second place is a great result for Tim and I; of course we want to win but that will come in time. It is a big confidence boost for me to run close to Nathan and Andrew. We want to finish every race in the best possible position we can and today we did that so I’m happy.”

Tim Mullen, a previous winner at Magny Cours, commented: “Overall we had a good day today. I managed to get past Andrew a few laps into the race but a little while after that I flat-spotted one of my tyres so Andrew got the lead back while I was suffering from the vibration. We were very evenly matched with the other car and we had a good battle on the track. Chris did a great job and is clearly improving race-by-race so we’re both looking forward to Knockhill where we want some more good results.”

Team Principal Stewart Roden commented; “We’ve had a difficult weekend what with the technical problems we had so we’re both pleased and relieved to take such a good result. The team pulled out all the stops this weekend and delivered when it mattered so I’m very pleased with them all. As the guys have said we came here to concentrate on the British GT Championship and we got the result we wanted.”

What’s next for Scuderia Ecosse?:
The team will be headlining at Knockhill’s annual Motorfair next weekend (7/8 May). The next round of the British GT Championship is at Knockhill on 21/22 May.

ENDS

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