team trice getting closer
Toby Trice secured a trio of fifth place finishes at the penultimate round of the Porsche Visit Cayman Islands Sprint Challenge.
Consistency was the overall message when looking at the bare results Toby achieved at the weekend, but delve a little deeper and it became clear that his weekend at Brands Hatch was definitely more than that.
After a successful time at Oulton Park, Toby and SVG Motorsport discovered a number of areas where they could improve the setup of the car, and they decided to make those changes during Friday practice at Brands Hatch.
“We’ve made some early phases of changes that we discovered at Oulton Park that might help us out,” said Toby. “So we tried those things through Friday practice.
“A lot of things clicked into place, I picked up a lot more pace and the car felt really sharp and more responsive to what I wanted the car to do.”
Being Toby’s home circuit, he was hoping to have a successful and competitive qualifying session, on what was his first time racing the GT configuration.
Toby qualified fifth fastest in the session, 2.4 seconds off the pace-setting time, but he felt he could have been even faster had he not crashed midway through the session.
“Saturday was my first opportunity to qualify on the GT loop.
“Unfortunately after lap four I put the car in the wall which pretty much ended my qualifying. And although I was able to go and set another lap afterwards - which was my fastest lap - unfortunately my confidence had dropped.
“It was a pretty big one, going sideways across the road and hitting the wall at just over 100mph, it was pretty interesting!” Toby said when mentioning the crash. “But thankfully the car wasn’t too damaged and the team did a great job getting it repaired and ready for the first race of the weekend.”
Having had his confidence knocked after the crash in qualifying, Toby’s mission in the first race was to rebuild his pace and confidence so that he could be more competitive later in the weekend.
“First race of the weekend was a confidence builder as I knew I couldn’t match the pace of the frontrunners. For me that was a test session to build my pace back up and rebuild my confidence.”
That plan worked a treat, with Toby finishing fifth and 14.5s off the leaders at the finish line.
But although pace was improving, the team felt something was still missing, and overnight on Saturday they made further changes to the car, which worked perfectly for Sunday’s final two races.
A great start in the second race allowed Toby to jump from fifth to third on the opening lap, and had it not been for a few mistakes costing him two positions, he could well have been in the fight for a podium all race long.
“Race two, the progress I made was massive.
“I managed to hold onto the pack, got myself into P3 from Turn 1 to five
“A couple of mistakes cost me the podium, but I was with the pack and I was really happy with the performance.”
Another tweak to the car was made by SVG Motorsport ahead of the final race of the weekend, and once again, it paid dividends.
“Race three felt like a win for me because it’s the first time I’ve actually been that close to the leaders in terms of outright lap pace,” said Toby
“It was such an achievement, and I only finished 1.2s off P4 and only three seconds off the actual leader. So I’m right there.
“We’ve learnt a lot as a team, sadly it’s too late in the season to fight for the podiums and championship, however we can take a lot from it.”
Such was the progress of Toby’s pace over the weekend that his fastest lap during the final race of the day was just a tenth slower than the overall fastest time.
And that level of progress has set up a tantalising prospect for the final race of the year, on a track that happens to also be Toby’s favourite.
“We cannot wait to get to the last round on 15th and 16th October for Donington Park.
“It’s my favourite circuit, I’ve had lots of success there in recent times. So, I’m really looking forward to hitting the ground running.”
