Sunday 15th June 2008
XL get fastest lap at Brands Indy

XL Raceparts got the fastest lap at the Britcar Brands Indy race on sat 14.6.08.

The weekend started well but in testing the ABS loom broke and we lost the ABS, destroying a set of tyres in the process. Neil Garner and his team carried out repairs and all seemed well and our Porsche 996 GT3 missed pole by 6hundredths of a second beaten only by the rapid 911 Virgin car driven by current Britcar champion Steve Bell, a 49.720 against a 49.787. The car  had earlier in practice posted a 49.562 lap but track conditions changed so 2nd was a truly great result.

In the race Mark "rocket ron" Coleing took the lead on the 1st lap and showed the true pace of the car. We were consistanly 1-2 secs/ lap faster than the pole man lapping in the mid 50's and within 45mins we had lapped all the class 2 cars and it was looking good for our 1st win. Then disaster struck, the ABS loom failed and no ABS meant locking brakes and once again the front tyres soon became 50 pence pieces, lap times dropped to mid 53's and we had to pit early for a fresh set of tyres.

Dom Evans then took over and tried to maintain the pace but at 52-53 secs laps the car was on the limit and quite undriveable, within a few laps the front tyres were totally destroyed and on lap 82 the inevitable happened, the car locked up going into paddock and the car simpl didn't stop and ended up in the barriers, game over.

It was a disappointing end to the weekend but there were very many positives to be taken. The car was clearly the best car out there, "rocket ron" was blisteringly fast and the team showed how professional an organisation Neil runs, a great great weekend all in all and a huge lift for all, roll on the next round at Silverstone on July 18th.