Nathan Freke weekend summary

A Multi-Tasking Racing Weekend for Nathan Freke

Kidderminster's Nathan Freke had a busy Easter weekend as he both had to manage his Century Motorsport team, whilst they prepared four Ginetta G50 Cup cars, to race on the BTCC support package, and racing in the British GT championship on Easter Monday at Oulton Park.

In 2009 Nathan had won the Ginetta G50 Cup Championship driving one of his own Century Motorsport prepared Ginetta G50 Cup cars.

As he is also has the team's only HGV Class 1 license, he had to drive one truck to Oulton Park in Cheshire and the other larger truck to Thruxton in Hampshire!

On Good Friday the teams had a test day at Thruxton, which is the fastest circuit that the BTCC uses in the UK, and with both rain and wind it was mainly a day of testing with wet weather tyres for the four Century Motorsport drivers.

On Saturday their was the only Qualifying session for the three races, with mixed results for Nathan's drivers (who is their Driver coach) but the dangers at this high speed circuit would be evident later in the weekend, but there are plenty of overtaking opportunities.

In the 3 following races (one on Saturday) the Century Motorsport drivers made progress but were disappointed not to get at least one on the podium, but they were against a Guest driver in the guise of Chevrolet works World Touring Car driver Rob Huff, who went on to win all three races.

After Nathan had organised the packing away of the cars and equipment and driven the packed truck back to Kidderminster he then went up to Oulton Park to take part in two 1 hour races. His co-driver for this championship was Danish lady driver Vibe Smed and as Nathan hadn't driven in any of the qualifying sessions the car started towards the back of the grid.

With Nathan's co-driver new to the car it was down to Nathan to get the best pace out of his Ginetta G50 GT4 car (very similar to the G50 Cup car but without the rear wing) before handing it over to his co-driver. They had a good strong run and finished in 3rd place in the GT4 class. In the 2nd race their race finished early on lap 8 with an engine issue.

As Nathan commented after the race "This was the one weekend this season when the race meetings overlapped and I was initially fully concentrating on my 4 Ginetta G50 Cup drivers getting the setup right for the races, with only mobile phone contact and advise for my British GT co-driver Vibe. For the next British GT races at Knockhill I won't have this clash so will be fully focused on maximising our results. Before that I will be managing the four drivers at the next BTCC meeting at Rockingham on April 24/25"

-source: nathan freke