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Croft - August 11/12, 2001

Andy Scott	Tim Sopp
Andy Lofthouse	Gary Scott
Martin Dickson	Will Scott (Sunday)
Transporter Driver:	Ken Sly

Croft, close to Darlington in North Yorkshire, staged Rounds 17/18 of the British Touring Car Championship. Dave Allan was still in America for Honda so once again Mark Lemmer, the Barwell Team Manager, stepped in to drive the Synchro Honda Accord.

This weekend was back to the normal format with practice and qualifying on the Saturday and the two races taking place on the Sunday.

Saturday, August 11
It was cloudy and cool for the free practice, which started on time at 11 o'clock. Rain was threatening but never materialised.

The session went well. Mark finished in sixth place with the car handling and performing well. His time of 1m 31.526 was just 0.6 sec from Simon Graves in the Barwell Accord. Simon was carrying ballast from his previous week's fine win at Croft, but this was still a fine opening performance.

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Qualifying started bang on time at 1.45. Rob Collard, Nick Beaumont and Joanne Clarke failed to make the session so only fifteen cars set off in an attempt to get a good grid position for tomorrow's races. Mark had an excellent thirty minutes. Making two pit stops for tyre changes, he progressively reduced his time down to an excellent 1m 30.645 to qualify in sixth place, just one-tenth of second behind James Kaye and just 0.272 seconds behind the unballasted Alfa Romeo of Gavin Pyper. With three Honda Accords in the top six, hopes are high for a good result tomorrow.

Sunday, August 12
Sunday was a changeable day in more ways than one. The Sprint Race started four minutes late at 12.34 with the weather cloudy and the track dry. The Production cars had a delay of 25 seconds after the green light for the Tourers, but the race was immediately subject to the safety car after an incident at the first bend involving Tom Boardman. It stayed out on the track for four laps before the fifteen lap race began in earnest. Mark made a good start and was up to fourth place by the end of this first lap. However, Mark had two problems to contend with on the second lap. Firstly, he was pushed across the track by a Focus that allowed both Mat Jackson and Gareth Howell to go by. Then he collected Paul O'Neill's Peugeot after Paul had missed a gear down the back part of the circuit. This caused a fair amount of damage to the front end of the Accord as well as putting him back to ninth place. Mark spent the rest of the race trying hard to get back up the field and did manage to make up two places by the end of the race to finish in seventh place.

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The Synchro Team had put the Accord back into race order by the time the Feature Race started. An interesting situation occurred whilst the cars were on the grid. All the Production cars had gone out on slick tyres. However, it began to drizzle and then turn to light rain whilst waiting on the grid. At the very last minute, Synchro made the decision to go to wet tyres. It certainly paid off. The Feature Race, as always, was a rolling start and Mark, whilst the other cars were finding grip difficult, stormed to the front and fairly quickly opened a substantial lead. By the tenth lap, he had almost a ten second advantage over Jim Edwards in second place. However, on Lap 17, the safety car came out and the cars bunched back up again. Mark's troubles did not end there as the windscreen started to mist up badly. When the race resumed two laps later, Mark found it very difficult to see anything at all. He did keep the lead, though, until the twenty-fourth lap when firstly Jim Edwards and then Gareth Howell went by him. He had no option but to return to the pits. When he went back out he had dropped to seventh. His woes were still not over as it was announced that he had received a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane. And, to cap it all, whilst on his 'in' lap, he overran Tower and sunk the car deep into the gravel and his race was over.

It was so nearly a fantastic result for Synchro Motorsport. Mark has contributed immensely to the development of the car. The Accord's handling, which had tormented Synchro for most of the season, is much better. The next meeting at Oulton Park should, indeed, prove very interesting.

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