Kevin Procter takes a fairytail victory in France

Leeming’s Kevin Procter lifted his first European Rallycross Championship victory at Dreux in France last weekend to became only the third driver in history to win an A final the having first progressed through the C and B finals.

Driving the Tony Bardy-prepared Coach2.com Ford Focus, Procter won the second round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship after a disappointing showing in round one at Lydden Hill over Easter.

The finals were the only races run in dry conditions as two days of rain at the Circuit de l’Ouest Parisien made it a particularly arduous event and tipping the scales in favour of French drivers who occupied four of the six A final grid slots at the end of the qualifying heats.

Procter qualified 15th and led the C final from the start, progressing to the back of the B together with French veteran “Knapick” who appeared content to follow the Englishman and collect the eight and last grid space for the B final, in which the first couple of laps were quite physical.

Championship leader American Tanner Foust had earlier retired from the second heat with punctures to both front tyres and parked his Fiesta in the second lap of the B final. Procter, meanwhile, continued his magnificent progress, working his way through the field to run second to Russian Timur Timerzyanov. “Everything just fell into place in the B final and when I got behind Timerzyanov, I knew that I could just follow him and get to the A final. I’ve never had an A final in Europe before, so that was an ambition achieved in itself,” said Procter whose day was very far from done at that point.

Former French champion Marc Laboulle and this year’s French championship leader Jerome Grosset-Janin shared the front row of the grid but came to blows in the opening lap, Grosset-Janin’s run effectively ended after Laboulle’s Citroën Xsara rattled into his Renault Clio. Another former national champion and regular ERC front-runner, Davy Jeanney, went ahead. Procter was also on the move and ran second before taking the lead when Jeanney’s Citroën C4 failed. Laboulle then took the lead when Procter took his turn in the Joker Lap but was then repassed by the Englishman to take a sensational victory.

Speaking afterwards, Procter said: “After the heats I was disappointed not to qualify on the back of the B final but I led the C final from the start and got into the B and then everything went my way and got up to second place and knew that if could just stay there and follow Timerzyanov that I’d get to the A final. My goal has been just to get into an A final. That sounds a bit sad really but that’s been the aim since I started coming to Europe four years ago and when I went to the grid for this one I felt that I’d achieved an ambition. And then I somehow won it! I got through the pack in the first lap or so and the team were on the radio telling me to keep going. After the Joker Lap, Marc Laboulle got ahead of me but the made a bit of a mistake and I had to have a go at getting past him, that worked and I won. I’m pleased for Tony Bardy and the whole team because they take a lot of flak from me yet they work all hours to get the car here and then I don’t perform, so I’m glad for them to have won a race for them.”

The 2012 season was expected to be quite open, but Procter’s win has pushed him up to third place in the championship, just three points behind joint series leaders Liam Doran and Tanner Foust going into the next round in Austria at the end of the month.

Such was Procter’s feat that since the ERC began in 1973, the back-to-front journey through the C, B and A finals has only previously been accomplished twice by Olle Arnesson (France, 1982) and Richard Hutton (Portugal 1994).

View Gallery from Dreux

By Larry Carter

Will preparation standards be a factor in French ERC round? When Kevin Procter took part in Croft Circuit’s pre-season media launch on Tuesday it afforded the chance for some conversation with preparation expert Tony Bardy. Procter’s car was, as you would expect from anything that is allowed through the doors of Bardy’s workshop, immaculate, but to get the car back in that condition after the British ERC event at Lydden had taken a lot of hard work and effort.

Racing in conditions like this takes its toll on the cars (pic Tim Whittington)

“We were three days cleaning the cars after Lydden, it’s a long time since we have had event like that,” said Bardy. “I don’t what’s in the track at Lydden but there’s something corrosive in it, it eats into the anodised finish on bolts. We have military grade connectors in the wiring and it had even got inside of them, we’ve stripped so much of the car in the last three weeks you wouldn’t believe it. I spoke to Jos Kuypers the other day and he said the same, they’d spent days cleaning the car and then started to repaint the underside.”

 

Bardy and Kuypers are not alone, Michael De Keersmaecker clearly enjoys racing in the rain, but admits there’s a downside. “I like the rain when it comes during a race but I don’t like the work that it makes. After Lydden… there was so much work to do on the car. But we have done it and I’m sure that we are ready no matter what happens here,” said the Belgian. While there is no doubting that Bardy’s eye for detail and his meticulous quality control set a standard that few, if any, in the paddock can match, the Yorkshireman makes a very serious point about preparation.

 

“There’ll be some who come unstuck this weekend because of what happened at Lydden,” he says, clearly indicating that those whose standards of cleanliness are not as high as his own, may be inviting trouble by having left dirt or corrosion to create a weakness in their car. Louis Pasteur is credited with saying that “luck favours the prepared mind”, which translates well enough into the old motor sport adage “luck is made in the workshop”.

Whichever way you want to look at it, Bardy is more or less stating the obvious fact that you will only get out of motor sport the equivalent of what you put in; in this case seeing that the reliability of the car may have been compromised as a result of running it in wet and dirty conditions at one event means you need to make the extra effort to reinstate that reliability before going to the next event. Under the skin the two Bardy-prepared Fords of Procter and stablemate Andy Scott are white. White inside, white under the bonnet. Presented for scrutineering in France both are good as new, the only dirt that which has been picked up from the unsealed surface of the paddock at Dreux while the car moved from its truck to the scrutineering bay. If it’s true that cleanliness is next to Godliness…

Bardy (left) is renowned for his attention to detail

10.04.12 – Monster Energy International Rallycross Festival

Kevin Procter secured a valuable point after clutch problems at Lydden Euro opener

American racer and TV presenter Tanner Foust won the Monster Energy International Rallycross Festival at Lydden Hill Race Circuit on Easter Monday (April 9). Starting his third year in the FIA European Championship for Rallycross Drivers, of which this was the opening round, Foust and the Swedish OMSE team that build and run his Ford Fiesta Supercar mastered the wet and muddy conditions on a day of persistent rain, to qualify on pole position for the A final. “I don’t have a lot of experience of racing in conditions like that so I really had to let the team lead me on setup, they kept fine tuning it all day,” said Foust who led the final from start to finish. “It’s the perfect way to start the year but I’m not going away thinking we have the championship in the bag, the result here tells you that it’s going to be a very competitive year.”

Either side of Foust on the podium were Norwegian Mats Lysen and English start Liam Doran (Sittingbourne). While Lysen had an uneventful run to second place, Doran appeared to encounter every possible problem in the qualifying heats and started from third place on the B final grid. “That was a tough event, my Citroën DS3 is a new car this year and we only had dry weather testing before we came here so really it was like starting from scratch. The whole event has been like a big test session so to win the B final and then get to third place in A final is amazing,” said Doran who worked his way through the field in a determined drive.

Scotsman Andy Scott (Dumfries) had been best of the British drivers in the qualifying heats, never out of the top four, Scott started the A final from third place on the grid but lost a lot of time after being sent wide in the first corner, the windscreen of his Focus covered in mud and dirt, and was unable to do more than rejoin the race and take eighth place.

The Super1600 and TouringCar classes of the championship both produced first time event winners. Finnish driver Jussi-Petteri Leppihalme (18) qualified on pole position for the Super1600 A final and then led from lights to flag, taking the win in a smooth and controlled drive and leaving defending champion Andreas Bakkerud in second place.

The TouringCar A final was won by 19-year-old Swedish racer Anton Marklund who survived a crash in the qualifying heats to make it into the A final, and then grabbed the lead in the first corner where Derek Tohill and David Nordgaard tangled and ran wide. Marklund went on to win from Czech Roman Castoral and Tohill.
Results of A finals

Supercar

1 Tanner Foust (Ford Fiesta VII); 2 Mats Lysen (Renault Clio III); 3 Liam Doran (Citroën DS3); 4 Guttorm Lindefjell (Skoda Fabia); 5 Michael De Keersmaecker (Ford Focus II); 6 Stig-Olov Walfridson (Renault Clio III); 7 Jean-Luc Pailler (Peugeot 207); 8 Andy Scott (Ford Focus II)

Super1600

1 Jussi-Petteri Leppihalme (Renault Clio II); 2 Andreas Bakkerud (Renault Twingo II); 3 Krzysztof Skorupski (VW Polo IV); 4 Ulrik Linnemann (Peugeot 207); 5 Jaroslav Vancik (Skoda Fabia); 6 Vadim Makarov (Skoda Fabia II); 7 Davd Johansson (Citroën DS3); René Münnich (Skoda Fabia II)

TouringCar

1 Anton Marklund (Ford Fiesta VII rwd); 2 Roman Castoral (Opel Astra G rwd); 3 Derek Tohill (Ford Fiesta VII rwd); 4 Tomdaniel Tanevik (Mazda RX8); 5 Koen Pauwels (Ford Fiesta VII rwd); 6 David Nordgaard (Ford Focus II rwd); 7 Kim Steinsholt (BMW 1); 8 Pedro Bonnett (Volvo C30).