Rounds 7 and 8 at Silverstone, Saturday, June 2, 2001
Saturday night's BTCC Feature race at Silverstone provided plenty of on-track action, and James Kaye's (Team Kaliber Sport with Barwell) Honda Accord was right in the thick of it. Our man spent the entire 30-lap race in a constant dog-fight with his two main championship rivals, Simon Harrison and Roger Moen (Team HTML Peugeot 306GTis), who were never separated by more than a few seconds. All three drivers led the race, and ran second and third at various stages, as they swapped places regularly despite heavy rain making the night time conditions even tougher to deal with. In the end, Moen's lack of 30kgs of 'success' weight ballast gave him the edge, with James just half a second behind at the flag and Harrison third.
The weekend had started with a disaster, however, as both Kaye and new team-mate, Simon Graves (replacing our regular driver Peter Cate who unfortunately has been forced to stand down with sponsorship difficulties), suffered engine blow-ups in the early stages of official qualifying. James and Simon had been third and fourth fastest respectively during the early morning unofficial practice session, but neither driver had been able to repeat their morning times before the engine failures. This left them fifth (Kaye) and 10th (Graves) on the grid for the Feature race, but worst still the championship regulations stipulate that if a new engine is being run for the earlier Sprint race then the car has to start from the back of the grid.
With 20 cars ahead of Simon and James on the grid for the Sprint race, it was a case of trying to keep out of trouble as they carved their way up the order in a quest to score as many points as possible. Both drivers made good starts and passed about seven cars on the opening lap to put themselves amongst the midfield order. Incredibly, by the end of lap two they were running in eighth and 11th spots, and looking in good shape.
James quickly moved up to fifth and was gaining on the battle for third, when he pushed just a little bit too hard exiting the fast Bridge corner and had to survive a quick spin which dropped him back to eighth position! Simon was also having a 'yo-yo' type of race as he got to grips with the left-hand-drive Accord. Having been following James up the order he then slipped back to 12th, and had to start all over again! In the end our mechanics were rewarded for their incredible efforts (both car crews changed their engines in about three hours!) with two points-scoring finishes of fifth for James and eighth for Simon.
James made another good start in the Feature encounter to leapfrog straight into third place, slotting in just ahead of Harrison. Ahead were Moen and Gavin Pyper (Alfa Romeo 156), but James demoted Pyper on lap six and set about catching the Peugeot. Harrison then joined them three laps later and the pattern of the race was set, as these three pulled well clear of the rest of the Production field. Graves, meanwhile, was lapping further back in the field, steadily climbing up the order. He looked all set for a solid finish when, incredibly, his second engine of the weekend expired and he was forced into retirement.
Kaye's ding-dong battle with the Peugeots got hotter and hotter as the race progressed, and he was having to fight very hard to try and contain their significant power advantage. Towards the closing stages Harrison held sway at the front but he then suffered gear selection difficulties which left Moen fending off the advances of our man Kaye. Despite being quicker over the complete lap, James was crucially unable to get close in the braking areas for the corners and had to settle for second spot.
This leaves Barwell Motorsport still leading the Team’s Championship with James now second and Peter Cate still hanging on to 7th place in the Driver’s Championship even though he is sitting on the sidelines. We hope to see Peter back in the car later this year to continue his great start to the season.
