Italian job done – Pane is HFO champion…Rowland Kinch gets first HFO win with dominant performance – Sowerby claims Class C title after Folch is knocked out.
Estoril has been the scene for several HFO title deciders and 2009 was no exception as the likeable Italian driver, Mauro Pane claimed the honours in the iconic six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 prepared by his own F1 Storiche team.
But perhaps the real star of the race was Rowland Kinch. In just his second race in the G-Cat Racing prepared car, he showed he can be a real contender and his first win in HFO was wrapped up in comfortable style.
Qualifying had been incident packed. Peter Meyrick’s March 761 lost its rear wing at the fastest point of the main straight and pitched into the pit wall under braking, destroying the tub on the car and looked to have ended his weekend. Fortunately, David Abbott’s spare car – the ex James Hunt Williams-Hesketh – was leant to him and he took part in the race.
David Coplowe was less fortunate; having planned to visit the Peninsula War’s battlefields on his way to the next race at Jarama the following weekend, he ended up in his own peninsular battle with a wall, breaking his own tub on the Lotus 87 and was heading off home a week earlier than he’d expected.
Come race day, there were 18 of the 20 entered cars (Terry Sayles had left with fuel pickup problems) and in bright sunshine and in front of a strong crowd, the cars got away from the lights at the first attempt.
Kinch started 3rd on the grid behind regular winner Peter Sowerby (Williams FW07C) in second with outgoing champ, Steve Hartley, who put his Arrows A6 on pole with a scorching performance in qualifying. Joaquin Folch, winner at the previous round at Nurburgring and the other contender in the super competitive ground-effect category, was 4th.
On the left hand side of the grid, Harley and Kinch got the better start and went into the first corner neck and neck, the later model Arrows A6 holding onto position. Behind them Sowerby’s mirrors were filled with his rival Folch – but not for long; electrical problems, diagnosed as a spark box issue after the morning’s qualifying re-materialised at turn 3 and Sowerby was out on lap 1 with a now-confirmed broken crank trigger.
Hartley and Kinch went at it for the first four of 17 laps with little more than a few hundredths of a second separating them across the line each time but Hartley, who had joked that he wasn’t going to let anyone past before the start, was out-dragged on lap 4 and Kinch drove away from there. Kinch’s cause was helped by Hartley and Folch having a coming together on lap 5 that damaged the Spaniard’s front suspension and forced him into retirement. The incident also meant that with just 10 points available to each driver at the final race, Sowerby was confirmed the Class C Champion.
Behind the front two, Richard Eyre’s Williams FW08 was being menaced by former BTCC star, the locally-based Bobby Verdon-Roe, who was making an impressive comeback following a season-long rebuild having wrecked his McLaren M26 at Monaco earlier in the year. Ahead of Pane in qualifying, he put in a fastest lap in the Class B category and in passing the Williams was running third by lap 9 before a simple masterswitch failure put him out of the running and allowed Eyre back in to finish third.
The racing throughout the field was frenetic. Stefano Rosina’s March 741 and local hero, Rodrigo Gallego’s March 761 were glued together from the start until lap 12, repeatedly coming across the line nose to tail as Gallego weaved to keep the Italian behind him. It looked like it would end in tears but the battle was cut short when Rosina, having finally managed to get pass, lost gears and cruised back to the pits to finish 11th. That left Peter Wunsch in the Hall & Hall prepared Wolf WR2 in 6th with the impressive Patrick D’Aubreby (Tyrrell 012) seventh after a strong race in the Ecurie Griffiths-prepared car.
Abba Kogan’s beautiful Matra MS120 finished first in Class A and ninth on the road ahead of fellow class battler, John Delane, who drove well in his Tyrrell 002 despite suffering from illness throughout the weekend. Luciano Quaggia’s Theodore TR1 was involved in a collision with the Shadow DN9 of Frenchman, Michel Baudoin towards the end of the race. Baudoin – impressively 6th fastest at the terminal velocity speed gun over the weekend – was undeservedly left in the gravel and out of the race but still collected 4 points for his championship haul finishing just behind Quaggia in an unlucky 13th.
At the end of the race, Kinch celebrated whilst second-placed Hartley returned to parc fermé with an engine on fire having blown his second DFV in consecutive meetings, on the last corner of the slowing-down lap!
With all class titles now decided and the overall honour having been won, the final round of the season will be a real Race of Champions at Jarama on 25/26 October at the Martini Legends event.