The Barwell Motorsport team and driver, Aaron Slight, suffered cruel misfortune at Thruxton yesterday, when the former World Superbike star looked set to score a pair of superb top five results and Independent Cup victories, but was robbed of the chance to take them. We had to endure further heartache at the Hampshire venue, when Aaron’s team-mate, Tom Chilton, was put out of the Feature race in a crash on the opening lap.

At the start of the weekend we were expecting an uphill battle to be ultra-competitive, as neither Aaron nor Tom had raced at Thruxton before, and to put Tom even further on the back foot, he was forced to miss the pre-event test day. At such a high-speed track, where the average lap speed is around the 110mph mark, feeling fully ‘at one’ with your car is absolutely imperative.

Despite this handicap, both drivers were immediately impressive during Sunday morning’s first ‘unofficial’ practice session. Aaron absolutely stunned the opposition by setting the fourth fastest time overall, as he revelled in the superb handling of his Barwell Motorsport Vauxhall Astra. Tom was also showing great promise after completing so few laps, and was 10th quickest at this stage. The ‘Achilles Heel’ of our inexperienced driving duo, however, is that at the moment they are still unable to really make use of their new tyres in the official qualifying sessions. This is where the experienced factory drivers are able to step up a level, and extract every last bit of grip out of their fresh slick tyres over a single qualifying lap. Both drivers were able to improve their morning lap times by a fraction, but were leapfrogged in the order as the seasoned opposition improved by bigger margins. Aaron thus qualified 10th and 9th quickest overall for the Sprint and Feature races respectively, with Tom 13th and 14th (after his Feature race session was cut short by an ‘off’).

Aaron made a blinding getaway at the start of the 15-lap Sprint race, and was immediately up to 8th spot as they crossed the line at the end of the first lap. He then picked off Colin Turkington (MG ZS) and Tim Harvey (Peugeot 406) in quick succession to move into 6th overall and the lead of the Independents Cup division. Once clear of these two he set some excellent lap times and was closing in on the factory Honda Civic R of Andy Priaulx.

With the factory Astra of Yvan Muller retiring, Aaron’s chase of Priaulx became the fight for fourth place overall. Sadly, this charging drive and certain ‘Indie’ Cup win was ruined when the engine blew a head gasket and the water temperatures on the Barwell Astra started to soar above 120 degrees. Once Aaron had radioed in with this information, we had no choice but to tell him to back off the throttle during the remaining laps to avoid blowing the engine up. It was then gutting to watch him have to give up his pursuit of the Honda, and let both Peugeot 406s of Harvey and Dan Eaves past. The engine temperature came down slightly and he was able to hang on to seventh place (and third ‘Indie’ runner) at the flag – but this was scant reward for such a great performance. Tom, meanwhile, was looking set for a top 10 finish when he encountered a gearbox problem which hampered his progress towards the end of the race, and he slipped back to 13th spot.

The head gasket failure on Aaron’s car meant that an engine change was necessary for the Feature race. The Triple Eight Race Engineering-built BTCC Astra is designed so that when you take the engine out, everything has to come with it – suspension, subframe, air intakes, radiators, wiring, ancillaries, pumps etc etc, basically everything that lives under the bonnet apart from the chassis legs. Unfortunately, with us not having the resources of a factory team to have a complete, ready-to-go, built-up spare front assembly unit ready (costing over £60,000), we had to swap everything over from the old engine to the new one. This is a process that normally takes around 4 hours in the workshop, but yesterday we only had a little over two to do it in! The Barwell crew did an amazing job to try and pull a rabbit out of a hat, but in the end we just ran out of time, needing about another 15 minutes to get the car safely ready for the race, before it had started. Just to rub salt into the wound, Harvey’s Peugeot, which Aaron had comfortably been ahead of in the Sprint race, finished fourth overall in the

Feature. . .

Although Tom did actually get to start the Feature race, incredibly within half a lap it was all over for him. He got a fantastic run at the rolling start, immediately made up two places at the first corner, and then went around the outside of the factory Honda of Alan Morrison through the second bend. As he turned into the Complex, however, he got a hefty tap on the right rear quarter from the MG of Gareth Howell, and this had some effect on the rear handling of the car as Tom then spun at the next bend, a fast left-hander. His car ended up being stranded, stationary, in the middle of the circuit, and was then hit very hard in the boot and rear quarter by a Production Class car that had nowhere to go to avoid him. Sadly that meant immediate retirement for Tom, and the end of the day for the Barwell team.