Troubles for Car #81

Rob Bell got out on a drying circuit for his first stint at 18:14hrs on a new set of slicks, and dare I say – blue skies and sunshine.

Four minutes later, Tom Milner took over from Danny Watts  and rejoined back in 6th , but one place ahead of Bell.

Having spent a lot of his time behind the safety car, Tomlinson said that “it was actually harder to keep the car on the track under the safety car than it was during the stint because the tyres went really cold – I couldn’t get any heat into them.

“Then it absolutely peed it down and about half the field pitted for wet tyres, which turned out to be a bad decision for them because we just did the run to the end and its dried up too, fingers crossed.”

Thirty minutes later and Tom Milner pulls the #81 Panoz into the garage with gearbox problems. Immediately, the Team get to work, acting together to get the car back out as soon as possible.

This they did in exactly 30 minutes time, so at 19:21hrs, Milner was back out there.

Number 1 mechanic on Milner’s car - Roexplains the problem: “We lost gears – the pin at the front of the gear leaver had broken – it had just sheared off and completely missing. But there’s also an oil leak from the gearbox. The lads were underneath the car while I fixed the gear leaver problem, but they haven’t found anything so we’ve put fresh oil in and sent it.”

20:24hrs and Tom Kimber-Smith takes over from Milner who says “everything’s cool” so that’s good news. Kimber-Smith’s pace is back up to the 4:11’s giving hope that all is indeed “cool”.

Meanwhile, Dean had a stint in #82, handing over to Tomlinson at 20:06hrs with the GT standings as 97 (having had 6 pit stops), 76 (7 pit stops), 93 (4), 87 (5), 80 (8), 86 (5), 82 (5), 99 (7), 85 (7), 71 (5), 78 (7), 83 (6), 81 (4)