A FIRST, FOR MOST...

Much like the weather, the first round of 116 Sprint and 116 Trophy at Brands Hatch Indy Circuit threw everything at 2024's new driver pairings.

Kicking off the weekend on Saturday, with two 15 minute sprint races. The four DTO cars, showed incredible pace and driving ability in both dry and wet track conditions. This becomes even more impressive, when we consider this was not only the first ever race for most of our drivers, but also their first time driving the 116 cars in the wet.

All four cars had fantastic races, with top 20 finishes in a packed and competitive field. Crossing the finish line in challenging weather wasn't only a racing achievement, drivers received their all important race license upgrade signatures.

Sunday was much of the same for the weather and brought us the first round of 2024 116 Trophy series, with the longer 90 minute endurance race. Now with five of the DTO cars competing, drivers who hadn't raced on Saturday found themselves in a similar position; qualifying for the first time in the wet with some incredibly tough conditions.

Strong performances from all ten of our drivers during qualifying, saw us line up as high as 21st in a huge field of 42 cars.

The race start saw a glimpse of sunshine and a much appreciated dry circuit, meaning the drivers were much more confident and able to push on from the moment the lights went out. 42 cars around the short, narrow Brands Hatch Indy Circuit was always going to be a baptism of fire for the team of racing newcomers, but despite their lack of experience, each and every one of the 10 drivers showed pace and ability that far exceeded the level of experience they have and two of the five cars, #104 and #101, ran comfortably inside the Top 10 for much of the race.

A few bumps along the way left two of our cars with DNF’s after an unfortunate off for #105 left it unable to continue and a mechanical gremlin for #103 also left it out of contention. There was a more positive final outcome for the #101, #102 and #104 cars though. The #104 car finishing comfortably inside the Top 10 in a potential 6th position before a very questionable 50 second time penalty was added to its final race time for a safety car infringement, which despite us providing onboard video evidence to the contrary to the stewards, the decision was not overturned, leaving the team in an eventual 19th place and a very impressive 15th for the #101 and 21st for the #102.

We couldn’t be more proud of the drivers and the team for all of their efforts over the course of the weekend and we cannot wait to go again at our home race at Silverstone on 18th and 19th May.

Elliott Cole , Director of Performance & Coaching.