LOUIS Harvey enjoyed a successful end to his first season of car racing with his Pro-am Racing team at Brands Hatch Indi circuit last weekend.
Harvey was involved with two races over the two days for his Pro-Am Racing team; the finale of the MSVT Trackday Championship season on the Saturday with driving partner Jack Kemp, as well as being part of the four-man Pro-A Racing team for the MSVT EnduroKA Indi 500 endurance race on the Sunday.
On Saturday, Harvey and Kemp were looking to hold onto second in the championship and despite the duo qualifying slightly lower than usual, a faultless first-half drive from Harvey put them in a good place.
After the compulsory driver stop, Kemp took over and was able to maintain position to see them walk away from the weekend as Class C Vice Champions.
Sunday was the MSVT EnduroKA Indi 500 race and would see 38 cars and well over 100 drivers racing into the dark hours in very mixed weather conditions over 8 hours and 20 minutes.
Qualifying was held late on Saturday and the Pro-am team of 4 drivers; Justin Roberts, Nicole Drought, Louis Harvey and Scott Thompson, qualified 13th for the Sunday race.
After heavy rain overnight, Roberts was the first driver and he worked his way up the grid to eighth before it was time for Harvey to take over.
In the now heavy rain, Harvey didn’t disappoint and after refueling and jumping in the car, he rejoined the race in 13th position.
After only 20 minutes of racing, he was up to third position and pushing for the lead. As the clock ticked an hour into Harvey’s stint, the youngster made a precision move into Graham Hill Bend to take the lead.
Harvey not only held the lead but pulled out a seven-second advantage before handing the car over to Drought.
The team lost four places during the next refuelling and driver change so Drought was pushing hard to regain the lead and as the drivers hit the 200-lap mark, Drought was back into the lead of the race.
But after a number of close battles, Drought had to settle for third position ready for the final driver change to Scott Thompson.
Thompson was quickly up into second but the leader had managed to pull out a substantial lead.
Lap after Lap Thompson was closing the gap and with around 15 minutes left was right on the bumper of the leader, Professional racing driver Nick Tandy.
Unfortunately, as the race was heating up for the final laps, the leader’s car suffered a rear hub failure spinning the car around and forcing Thompson to take evasive action to avoid a big accident.
This allowed the chasing drivers to close the gap but Thompson drove a flawless final 14 minutes to cross the line as winner of the EnduroKA Indi 500 race.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here