Fannin roars to a win to keep super record
A WIN on the Brands GP circuit where he had his first victory in Ginetta Juniors as a novice was very satisfying for Jody Fannin after a challenging weekend.
He and team-mate Warren Hughes maintained their record of winning all the races they have finished in the GT 4 class of 2012 British GT championship.
Their championship lead is now a healthy 52.5 points.
During the first practice on Saturday morning, Hughes did not get much running because of an overheating problem.
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This was resolved for the second session where Fannin, from Oxted, had to return quickly to have a fluid leak investigated.
That was swiftly resolved and the 18-year-old managed a few laps before the car stopped at Druids with an electrical issue.
Team WFR worked flat out all afternoon to trace the issue before qualifying.
As they hadn't managed much running, there had been no time to concentrate the car on set-up so Fannin, waiting with helmet on, jumped into the Ginetta G50 for three laps to see where the car's pace was.
"The car seemed reasonable, but we were about half a second off pole, so we had some work to do," he said.
Hughes did the rest of the session after new tyres and a small change to the car and improved on Fannin's time by 0.1 of a second, resulting in third place on the grid.
The ten-minute warm-up on Sunday was damp, so Team WFR were unable to try some setup changes.
As a result the GT4 championship leaders went into the race without an ideal setup but still confident of a good result.
As the cars were released for the start of the race on a dry track it started to rain, but not long enough to necessitate a change to wet tyres.
Hughes was running in third, keeping the leaders in sight and taking no chances in very tricky conditions on slicks.
As the race settled down, he moved up to second and pitted soon after the pit stop window opened to hand over to Fannin.
Due to the extra 20 seconds pit stop penalty for winning at Rockingham, he rejoined behind the second placed Mazda, but was quickly past it and back to second place.
The lead APO Sport Ginetta pitted just before the pit stop window closed and exited the pits 12 seconds ahead of the Team WFR G50.
Over a period of several laps the gap came down to three seconds, when the rain fell again.
"These are conditions I normally revel in but I decided to be conservative and took it easy while the shower passed," explained the MSA Academy Squad member.
The gap extended slightly and, with 25 minutes to go, with the shower gone, he closed the gap and out-braked the leader into Druids. The gap extended to 20 seconds by the end of the race.
"There's a long way to go yet, including a three-hour race at Silverstone, so we need to keep racking up the points," said Fannin, who now has a break until the next round at Snetterton on August 4-5.
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