Highs and Lows for Juno Racing in Britsports at Brands Hatch

28 June 2005

Lancashire based, Juno Racing had an eventful outing at the Britsports Brands Hatch round this weekend. Fielding the SS3-V6 of Dave Mountain and Andreas Halkiopoulos and the SSV6 of Dominic Lesniewski and Stamatis Katsimis, the team showed a strong hand in qualifying.

With a very healthy 34 car field, qualifying was certainly a busy affair and, being his first Brands outing, Greek youngster Katsimis was quick to impress ensuring third on the grid for the black SSV6, with the silver SS3-V6 just four places further back.

Lesniewski started the race in the SSV6 and made one of his customary excellent starts, going from third to take the lead which he comfortably stretched out. "The speed of the car was superb" commented Lesniewski, "and I was able to show the lap potential the busy qualifying session hadn't allowed so I was feeling very confident."

The team took the opportunity of a safety car period to change drivers and send Katsimis out, with a soft brake problem Lesniewski had noted towards the end of his stint. Even driving with caution, Katsimis further consolidated the team's lead to some 38seconds, when the brake problem came to a head causing a failure on the entrance to Druids. Despite a heavy impact, Katsimis was shaken but thankfully unhurt, grateful that the problem occurred where it did given the fast and sweeping nature of Brands Hatch.

"At the moment it would be daft to speculate on the exact nature of the brake problem" Team Director, Ewan Baldry noted afterwards, "and sadly it has put the black car out of contention for Sunday's race. However, it will be more than ready for the next race at Snetterton. The speed of the car, and the partnership between Dominic and Stamatis today has certainly proved a mighty force which is hugely encouraging."

The SS3-V6 of Mountain and Halkiopoulos provided a trouble free ending to the first race of the weekend coming home in fifth place. And their reliability was further proved in Sunday's race which saw Mountain as high as second place in his stint, whilst Halkiopoulos doggedly drove , suffering from the after effects of a migraine attack the previous evening, to bring the car home in seventh.

As Ewan Baldry said after the race, "The car is very reliable, it just didn't miss a beat this weekend, session after session. One of our main focuses now is to continue with aerodynamic development and we hope to consolidate this with back to back testing in the near future."

RH

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