Kinch scores at Superleague Donington
Rowland Kinch put the boot into the opposition with a lights to flag victory at Donington last weekend to take maximum points in his quest to top the points table for this year’s FIA Historic Formula One Championship. The G-Cat Arrows started from pole and was never headed, finishing nearly 15 seconds ahead of Steve Hartley’s rapidly improving Mirage Arrows and Joaquin Folch’s Kumschick Williams which had started from the back of the grid.
This HFO meeting was a hurriedly organised replacement for the aborted Interlagos event, the Donington meeting taking place as part of the Superleague Formula spectacular. “We worked with Superleague last year at Estoril and have had full co-operation with them again here in the UK,” said HFO co-ordinator, Stuart McCrudden.
Whilst prior travel and holiday arrangements conspired to limit the HFO grid to 16 cars, the regular front runners were all present. The monsoon that covered most of the UK on Saturday afternoon washed out the second qualifying session so the grid was formed on the damp first run. Kinch took pole from Bobby Verdon-Roe’s McLaren with Hartley third, Folch in the Brabham, Frank Sytner’s Hesketh, Richard Eyre’s Williams, Peter Dunn’s March and Dave Abbott in his new Arrows. Katsu Kubota had gone into the gravel and was going to have to start way down the grid.
In Sunday morning’s 10 minute warm-up Folch’s car had fuel pressure problems which could not be identified accurately enough for security so with just 20 minutes to go to the start, Freddy Kumschick decided to off load the Williams from the truck and hastily get it scrutineered and fuelled for the race although of course the Spaniard had to start from the back of the grid just as he had done at Monza. Could he drive through the field again to get a foot on the podium?
From pole Kinch was never headed whilst Hartley out jumped Verdon-Roe with Sytner and Eyre chasing. Kubota had gear selection problems from the start and Abba Kogan stalled his Williams and was last away. Kinch set fastest race lap on his 2nd tour. Eyre battled past Verdon-Roe only for his fuel pressure to die on lap 10. Abbott broke a drive shaft and Giancarlo Casoli apparently ran out of fuel on the penultimate lap. Frank Sytner’s run ended early with handling problems having had to remove the damaged front wing after just six laps. “There was absolutely zero front grip after we took the wing off and that really is no fun at all, so I brought it in rather than risk anything else,” said the Monaco resident.
Peter Dunn finished 5th ahead of Abba Kogan with a fast finishing Katsu Kubota 7th, Tony Smith 8th and Michel Baudoin 9th, Casoli classified 10th with Terry Sayles pretty Osella 11th and class D winner.
What of Folch? By lap 5 he was up to 8th, by lap 8 he held fifth and kept on working the Williams hard. “This car is much more physical to drive than the Brabham and 18 laps round here is pretty hard anyway,” reported the Spaniard wiping away the sweat as he mounted the podium to take a hard earned third place trophy.
Verdon-Roe has been carefully collecting points and leads the Championship by a single point from Kinch with Folch just five points further back. The next race is the traditional double-header at the Eifelrennen meet at the Nurburgring at the end of September and the finale will be at Paul Ricard at the very end of October. It seems highly likely that the result will, as is often the case, go right down to the wire at the last race of the season. Whoever collects the trophy will have had a remarkably close run season.