Porto Report

No Joy on streets of Porto

The latest round of the WTCC on the streets of Porto, Portugal failed to see a turn round in the mid season misfortunes of Tom Boardman’s 2009 Independents campaign, suffering a gearbox problem and being the total innocent victim in an accident.

After qualifying his SEAT Leon TFSi in a disappointing 7th place for the first of the two races around the historic Boa Vista circuit, the Lancashire driver was determined to make amends in the races. A set up change for the races was tried during the Sunday morning warm-up, but this was inconclusive as the track remained wet for the 15 minute session after some earlier rain.

The track was still drying as the cars headed out to the grid for race one, and with some dark clouds still hovering overhead there were a lot of discussions between Tom and his engineers over the radio about tyre choice and possible last minute set up changes. Always confident in his abilities in changeable conditions, the car remained on slick tyres for the start of the race.

There was an early incident following the rolling start, with the BMW of Sergio Hernandez and the Lada of Jaap van Lagen getting together before the cars had even arrived at the first corner, which would ultimately bring out the red flag, but not until another incident further round the opening lap blocked the track and had a number of cars suffer some minor damage as a result.

With the race stopped the cars slowly made their way back to the grid, a number of cars needing some hasty repairs, including the Tom’s SunRED entry. However the Special Tuning team soon had the car fixed and ready for the restart, which would take place behind the Safety Car. A couple of good opening laps had Tom challenging Independents points leader Felix Porterio’s BMW for third place. During the fourth lap the gear change started to become difficult, and the gear indicator developed a fault, forcing Tom to drop back.

Despite having to manage a failing gearbox, Tom was able to maintain his 4th position until the end of the race, however the gear selection problems had become too severe to consider starting race 2 without replacing the gearbox, which meant withdrawing the car from Parc Ferme and having to start race 2 from the back of the grid.

Race two was the 100th WTCC race, and faced with having to come through the field once again on a street circuit, but confident that he had proved that overtaking was possible in race 1, Tom knew it was important to avoid any incidents in the opening couple of laps. Entering the 3rd lap Tom was ready to start looking for his opportunities, and as other ahead pushed too hard early on an accident between Nicola Larini and Gabriele Tarquini, caused Mehdi Bennani to take to the escape road. As Bennani rejoined, he drove between the two stranded cars straight onto the racing line and into Tom’s SEAT Leon, taking him out of the race on the spot.

Extensive damage to both suspension and bodywork has left the Special Tuning (UK) Ltd crew with plenty of work to be done ahead of the next event at Brands Hatch in under two weeks time.