Jonathan France talks us through his experience of events in Spa
I think that the dramas started on the weekend preceding the race when Mario informed us that he wouldn’t be able to participate in Belgium, but having settled on Tom Kimber-Smith to partner Joey in car 46, I felt reasonably confident of a good showing. However, as I prepared to fly out on Thursday morning I was informed that long time Embassy man, Dennis McGee, had suffered a heart attack the night before and was hospitalised in Wakefield! It’s at times like this that you begin to take stock......
Whenever we race in Belgium I usually take the opportunity to visit several business acquaintances in Brussels , and this time around I spent a day in the capital city with my commercial head on before travelling to the circuit on Friday morning, to be there in time for a full English at 0730 prompt. What could be better than sausage, bacon and egg and a cup of tea? How about the news that the team’s transit van had been written-off enroute to the circuit the day before? They say that these things come in threes, or is that fours, or fives? I’d lost count by this time.
After Friday’s free practice two I noticed 12 missed calls on the bat-phone, all from the client I had been to see the day before – the upshot being that I had left some important paperwork in his car! With him about to head off for the weekend I embarked on a three hour round-trip retrieval mission at 7pm. Saturday was fast approaching and was reasonably drama free as it turned out!
In fact, at the end of that day I thought we as a team were in very good shape. We had qualified one car in the top six and one in the top ten and I was sure we were on for a good result in the race proper. On Friday both cars were set up almost identically to Monza, where I felt we were at our most competitive so far this year. We kept making steps forward in all the free practice sessions and even though we had new driver pairings things seemed to be getting better and better and there was a general good feeling from everybody in the team. In short, I personally felt we could have had one car on the podium and one in the top six when it came to the end of the race.
Then, when Sunday did arrive things just got off to the worst possible start when car 46 was comprehensively rammed by Casper Elgaard in the Team Essex Porsche during the parade lap. He simply wasn’t paying attention and driving at racing speeds when everybody else was crawling behind the safety car.
Without being able to see the car and assess the damage I felt not only angry but a huge sense of frustration and deflation not just for me and the guys on car 46 but for the whole team. Warren had witnessed what had happened and radioed in immediately. At the same time we had Joey on the radio reporting the incident, so when he said the wheels were off the car we knew he was out of the race and that it was game over. I was livid that, through sheer stupidity, somebody had cost us a chance to compete in the race by driving like an amateur. I felt myself and the team were robbed not only of the enjoyment and the reward of competing in the race, as that is what it’s all about – the race, but the chance to show what we could do against a highly competitive field. The team works hard in between races, working ridiculous hours to get these cars ready for what is supposed to be the most enjoyable part of the whole job – the racing. We had that taken away from us through no fault of our own.
Once we had established clearly in our minds what had happened I instructed Jody to lodge an official protest with the stewards and the result of that was that Elgaard received a three minute stop and go penalty, which probably equates to less than a lap and a half of Spa. But they still finished on the podium and we effectively got penalised 143 laps, hardly a fair outcome and I consider it a massive injustice.
I can’t comment yet on the full extent of the damage to car 46 but visually I could see that it was pretty comprehensive. One side of the car was completely off, so all my thoughts turned to what internal components might be damaged, something we will know in a few days time.
Ordinarily the preparations for Le Mans cause their own unique pressures and work load, but with this weekend’s events we are really going to be under the cosh with only limited time to prepare for the test day.
So, that was the story of car 46, but we had to regroup and turn our attentions to car 45.
In the opening two stints we were going well, and Warren looked to be competitive as he formed part of the battle fighting over 4th, 5th and 6th places. But when Jonny got in the car he suffered a similar fate to Joey. Somebody tagged him going up the long hill after Eau Rouge which sent him into a spin and in the process skimmed the barrier before beaching the car. There was some bodywork damage to the right side of the car, and particularly to the rear wing but we were confident of getting him back out fairly quickly. He lost a few laps whilst the car was off the track and when he got back to the garage time seemed to stand still while the repairs were being done. The crew worked heroically to get him back out, and once out on the track his times were fantastic. So we have to take some positives from that. Clearly the car had the pace to compete and was keeping with some very good company although not actually racing them for position. At one stage it even seemed like we might steal a point or maybe two.
Again Lady Luck was to play her hand when Jonny radioed in to say the engine had simply cut out. He tried for five minutes to get going again, running through all the procedures but to no avail. It was just one of those mysteries – similar to what happened at Monza.
Its days like that when you wonder why you put yourself through those experiences and I know there is a reason I just can’t quite recall it at this moment in time. Maybe in a previous life I was an Albatross hunter..........!
From a personal point of view I can take solace from the fact that the bike team had finished second at Brands Hatch and although the car team were also pleased with that news it was scant consolation, because as you can imagine, they were all bitterly disappointed at the day’s events in Belgium.
I’m glad that I can say that the Team Manager from Team Essex and Casper Elgaard did come and apologise later which I greatly respect, but that offers little consolation when the history books will show that they finished third at Spa and that Embassy Racing car 46 didn’t even start the race.
I know that we have all the correct ingredients in the mix, but I would just like a little bit of luck to see what difference that makes. We are knocking on the door and that elusive result will come. We are now into preparation for the 24 hours of Le Mans and the guys really do have their work cut out for them over the next few weeks. If hard work and dedication won races, then we would be leading the Le Mans Series by a country mile. But we have got to get our destiny back in our own hands and I know the guys won’t let up in making sure Embassy Racing has the best prepared racing car it can possibly take. La Sarthe is a place where team spirit really does count, and it’s plain for all to see the team spirit, camaraderie and will to win within every member of Embassy Racing. I can assure you that no matter what the setbacks, we won’t be turning out anything less than our best.
