Michael Bentwood – “The amateurs need to go” - 29/04/04

Having taken a podium finish at Thruxton in the first meeting of the season, Michael Bentwood and the VX Racing Jnr team, run by Tech-Speed Motorsport, showed that they have the pace to challenge at the front this year. Moving on to the Brands Hatch Indy circuit, a track where Michael enjoyed a double-win in his production class BMW last year,

Having just broken in to the top ten during free practice, qualifying on Saturday afternoon was guaranteed to be a very tight affair, with less than a second separating the top 17 drivers. Michael overcame handling problems with the car to put in a scorching lap towards the end of the session that saw him set the second quickest time, beaten only by fellow independent race Colin Turkington.

So with a front-row start for the first race of the day, Sunday looked set to bring more strong results. Only for disaster to strike. Michael takes up the story: ”The starter motor packed up in the pitlane. We were very lucky to get the car started at all, because you have to put them in fourth, and they’ve got such high compression in the engine that it’s very difficult. So we were lucky to get it going, and then obviously started at the back of the grid and just got involved in somebody else’s accident.”

The accident in question was not a small one, involving Jason Plato, Justin Keen and John George as well as Bentwood. All but Keen were ruled out of the second race of the day, with John George’s Civic also beyond repair for the third.

“Plato’s right, the amateurs need to go. There is such a speed differential, they cause mayhem. Especially the inexperienced guys. We couldn’t enter the second race because the car was so badly damaged and the starter motor had just failed. We’re going to find out the history of it – we don’t know why such a basic component should just die.”

With the Tech-Speed Motorsport team having worked flat-out to repair the car, the third race of the day offered just a small hope of making up for some of the morning’s disappointment, albeit starting from the back of the grid once more.

“In the third race, I got a great start, alongside Plato, watched Neal run wide and all of a sudden I got a hefty whack from the rear, and the clutch died – I couldn’t engage any gears. When I could limp to the pitlane, it was no good; I just couldn’t select a gear. When it did select a gear, it just stalled because the clutch wasn’t clearing.”

“So a fantastic qualifying performance – I proved to everybody that there is no doubt I can do a good job with races and everything else – we showed we can do it in qualifying now as well. I’ve had such positive feedback from everybody. We will do it again once we get the bloody thing reliable. The Astra’s got a wonderful proven track record with races and reliability and all of a sudden it doesn’t want to work. We’ll get it sorted.”

A frustrating raceday for Bentwood, who left Brands Hatch with nothing to show for his impressive qualifying performance. With the exception of the satisfaction of having out-qualified not only young-gun VX Racing adversary Luke Hines but also, Yvan Muller, James Thompson and the entire works-backed field.

Useful links:
www.michaelbentwood.com

Photography: Peter Still