Jo Polley and the rest of the Eurotech team were at Rockingham over the May Bank Holiday weekend for the second meeting of the season of the Mini Challenge.
This time, there were no clashes with the BTCC so Jo, Jeff and the rest of the team could concentrate on just the one championship at a time! Rockingham was the scene of one of Jo’s best Mini challenge races a couple of seasons ago when she had got all the way up to fourth place off the start.
This meant they could spend a bit more time on track, starting with Friday testing and things went well for all three drivers (Jo, Jeff Smith and Brett Smith.) The race weekend would be split over the two days with Qualifying on Saturday and then the two races on Sunday.
Jo was feeling confident going into qualifying, having found lots of time in the Friday test sessions. Qualifying went very well for Brett who put his car into an excellent third on the grid. Jeff initially had also set an excellent time but he was judged to have exceeded track limits and his best time was taken away leaving him in ninth. Jo was disappointed with her session as she ended up twenty sixth. Jeff’s car needed an engine change after a problem was found after the session.
The cars were then prepared for race day. Jo was determined to put the disappointment of qualifying behind her and move up the field. As the lights went out for race one that’s exactly what she did, moving up to an excellent seventeenth place before a stranded car brought out the red flags stopping the race. Unknown to Jo, something on her car was starting to fail. The race was restarted once the stranded car was cleared and Jo continued her fight until three laps from the end when something really broke on the car sending her briefly off track. With the front rattling and banging she pulled off the circuit to retire from the race. It was a frustrating end to what had been a strong race as the driveshaft had failed. Brett and Jeff finished the race but were also frustrated with their finishing positions, Brett in seventh and Jeff down in fourteenth after some run ins with rivals.
Hoping for more luck in race two, Jo made a good start but after the Deene Hairpin found herself boxed in and lost a couple of places. She spent the next few laps fighting back and fought up to twenty third but something wasn’t right with the car and it was slowing her pace. After the race, it was found that a seal on the gearbox had failed and had been leaking oil out on to the tyres, seriously affecting the handling! But Jo had a better race than Jeff who was out early in the race after heavy contact from a rival car.
It was down to Brett to salvage a good result for the team, which he managed with an excellent fourth place, just missing out on the podium and right on the pace of the lead trio.
Jo spoke about the weekend;
“So it’s been a tough Rockingham, I had a great first half to a really rough race one going from a P26 start to P17 but then we had a red flag and restart. Then I had another driveshaft break which meant a DNF. So I Started at the back for race two and managed to finish P23 despite a gearbox seal leaking oil on to my tyres. There was plenty of damage and failures keeping our boys busy over the weekend including an engine change overnight on Jeff’s car. But Brett is in a strong fourth place in the Championship so hopefully we can all have a good weekend at Snetterton.” By Marc Waller
