Gearbox woes hamper Bio-ethanol girl racer.

After a first couple of race meetings in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship where Fiona Leggate had smooth running, the Bio-ethanol powered racer found herself up against it at the Norfolk circuit of Snetterton.

The weekend started well with a very strong Saturday where practice and qualifying took place. Fiona performed superbly in the qualifying session and was only a second off the the works VX Racing Astra of Gavin Smith for much of the session.

“I was only a second off and there were bits of the track which I hadn’t quite got right. I wanted to work on but it was going into the Esses more than anything where you go from sixth to fifth that I was struggling with the gearbox downchange so it wasn’t really anything I could put into practice,” explained Fiona, referring to a problem with the gearbox of her Tech-Speed run Astra Coupe, which would blight her weekend.

Fiona’s strong run in qualifying meant she lined up in eleventh for the first race of the day on Sunday and she ran well to finish in that place, keeping a recovering Luke Hines in a manufacturer SEAT car behind her for far longer than Hines would have wanted.

In the second race, Fiona’s gearbox woes came to a head, and as she struggled with the shift she twice spun. Showing determination, Fiona stuck at it and eventually showed as thirteenth of the finishers.

Three races on one day makes for a tight schedule, and this caught out the team as they battled to find and rectify any problem. The gearbox was removed, but the car was not ready for its final race in the mere two hours on the timetable, meaning Fiona had to endure the heartache of missing a race.

“I was suffering with gearbox problems in the first and second race, but more so in the second race,” explained Fiona at the end of the day. “So the guys took the gearbox out and tried to mend it, got all the cogs and whatever put back on and couldn’t get the gearbox back in so unfortunately it was too late for me to go out so I missed the third race.”

Despite her woes, Fiona has been going down a storm with the bumper crowds at BTCC race meetings, and at the MotorSport Vision owned Snetterton venue it was no different.

“Everyone’s been very fantastic, all the crowds have been really supportive through whatever I’ve been through so I really appreciate that, it’s always nice to have people that are still backing you, even through the bad patches.”

Despite only racing for two years, the girl-racer from Lincolnshire displays a mature-head and is ready for her next race meeting at the Scottish circuit of Knockhill.

“You have to take the highs with the lows and you’re not always going to have highs in racing and more so you’re going to have a few more lows,” she explains. “But I love racing so much that you have to learn from the lows, you have to understand what the problem was, learn from it and try to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

Fiona has also picked up a fan from the ITV commentary team in 1992 British Touring Car Champion, Tim Harvey. “To Fiona’s credit she’s doing a really good job,” says Harvey. “She’s not put a foot wrong, she’s shown she can race with people and she’s shown she’s getting quicker all the time.”