small_podium.jpgNathan Freke made a stunning debut at the opening round of the Ginetta G50 championship held at Brands Hatch supporting the British Touring Car Championship. Coming to the meeting with less than a hundred laps under his belt and lack of funding for tyres it would be an uphill struggle to make a competitive showing. However, testing went very well and despite a power steering failure he ended the day only 9 thousandths of a second of the fastest time of the day. Qualifying became problematic when the team was unable to transport equipment to the pit lane to make changes to the car during the 20 minute session. The result was a slightly disappointing session and positions of 4th in the first grid, 4th in the 2nd grid and 3rd in the 3rd grid. The first shorter race was a fairly uneventful affair with Nathan getting into 3rd off the line and chasing the lead two for the 16 laps gaining his first podium finish in 2 years.

 

However the 2nd race was an entirely different, straight into 3rd off the line Nathan set off after frank Wrathall in 2nd and soon caught and disposed of him to take second place. He then set about chasing down the leader, setting a new lap record in the process. Going up to Druids on lap 12 Nathan had a run on the leader, got alongside only for the lead car to turn in and hit the bonnet and splitter off Nathans car. Undeterred he continued to harass the leader until lap 20 when early braking from the lead car allowed Nathan through into the lead and to take his first win in the series. Unfortunately after the race both drivers were called into the stewards office where the blame for the first contact was placed firmly on the leader  at the time and without any evidence Nathan was deemed to have had contact with the leader prior to taking the lead – the result a warning for Carl breeze and a 2 second penalty for Nathan – hardly even handed and pushed down to 3rd place.

 

The 3rd race saw Nathan into 2nd off the line and a 24 lap dice with Frank Wrathall ending with a last lap overtake by Nathan to end the day in 2nd place, 3rd overall in the championship, and the lap record. Considering the lack of experience and engineering the car himself an excellent weekends work and more to come next time out at Thruxton.