BTRA Truck Racing Championship 2015: Wild weekend in South Wales
The second event of the BTRA truck racing championship 2015 was marked by tough and highly competitive racing action in front of the biggest crowd ever seen at the Pembrey Circuit in South Wales.
Team Oliver Racing was looking forward to a great race weekend as the track action started on Saturday morning under splendid weather conditions.
In the warm up session on Saturday morning Stuart posted the 3rd fastest time, however the starting positions were determined by the drivers’ standings in the championship, which meant Stuart started 4th on the grid and Luke Taylor started 7th, which was how they finished respectively within the race.
The second race saw Stuart starting on the 2nd to last row at the back of the field after the reverse grid system was lined up. This however did not phase Stuart, he managed to cut cleanly through the field and not only showed his extensive experience, but also secured a top position and finished 1st on the podium in a relatively incident free race.
Stuart was very pleased with how the truck felt and was confident that the team were now heading in the right direction
for the rest of the season.
The subsequent three accident-packed races were a spectacle of their own for the fans watching and for the pilots fighting for the best possible results without causing too much damage to their race trucks; however, it was to prove pretty brutal combat.
The last race of the weekend saw Stuart and team mate Luke both involved in separate incidents shortly after the start of the race. Stuart was pushed from the back and into a fast moving truck on his left, who could not take avoiding action and left Stuart with a badly damaged driver’s door. At first, the officials allowed him to restart the race after the pit crew made some minor repairs, but then decided after 5 further laps to pull him in for safety reasons. This meant that Stuart could not collect any further points for the last race and still remains in 4th position overall in the standings.
Luke Taylor’s Scania did not survive the weekend undamaged either, nevertheless he managed to finish all races and therefore collected those all important points. As a consequence, he now ranks 7th in the overall standings.
The next race meeting is at Thruxton in three weeks’ time, which means that the Team Oliver mechanics have their work cut out to get both trucks race fit. The race officials will also be pretty busy analysing all incidents from Pembrey to ensure a smoother weekend when it comes.
