GOODYEAR MARANELLO FERRARI CHALLENGE
RACE REPORT : ROUND 11 : CROFT

PADDOCK STORIES

• Many competitors were obviously too young to remember Croft from its heyday in the 60s and 70s, when local hero Tony Dean thrashed around in his fabulous Dino 206S. His son Richard, you will all remember, drove the Parabolica 512M to victory in his only GMFC race in August 1996 at Donington.

• Ian Hetherington's F50 was a tremendous crowd pleaser with the Croft spectators, and the entire Ferrari entourage was received with the greatest enthusiasm. A big Saturday night get-together in the AMOC paddock marquee was open to all and enabled unusual mixing of the drivers with the locals. The whole GMFC crowd agreed: Croft should be on the calendar again next year.

• The track commentary of the Ferrari race could be described as less than informed. Clearly confused that a Ferrari could be something other than red, the commentator lavished inordinate attention upon James Munroe's F355/Ch, as its colour combination was the same as nearby Sunderland United's football strip.

• The reason David Ashburn suddenly went so much quicker in his F355 was that it had been set up by someone with McLaren connections. After Monza, just imagine how much quicker still it would have gone had it been set up by Ferrari.

• Not one who is usually in the wars, John Swift's 308GTB was tripped up by an over-enthusiastic Shaun Powell and spun to the tail of the field. About the only benefit of doing this is that you get to pass lots of cars as you climb back up again and Swifty enjoyed himself hugely to eventually finish 14th out of the 21, one place behind, er, Shaun Powell.

• Being new to the GMFC trail, Croft saw a number of Ferraristi surreptitiously pounding around in pre-event testing. Conversely, having been unable to attend his own test session, Stuart Bowler then declined to race on the unfamiliar circuit. Serious or what?