Tom Boardman - Team VartaWhile Luke Hines had round ten of the 2003 BTCC sewn up, the battle for 2nd place raged between Tom Boardman's Peugeot 307 and Michael Bentwood's BMW 320i. A mistake by Boardman allowed Bentwood to get by, but as they rounded the last corner and came on to the start-finish straight the two cars made contact, sending Michael Bentwood into the wall. The impact measured over 5G, but thankfully the BMW driver was unharmed save for a sore neck. Tom Boardman recovered to claim second place, and told us about the incident.
Basically, at the hairpin before the long left hander which leads into the start-finish, Michael kept out-braking me and coming to the inside, which meant I was on the outside coming out of the hairpin. So I got this run, we were side by side. I went to the outside to get the proper line to get a good run out on to the straight. All he did was defended his line on the inside.
So I had this run - this real quick run - on the outside but he's not moved over, it just went wrong. Just a racing incident, he was defending too much. He should have know, he should have come with me to get a run instead of defending so much. You're not going to be quick if you're on the inside round that corner, no way. I just feel bad for Michael because I saw him go into the wall hard. On to Croft, how do you think the cars will go there? Hopefully really well. I think we've got reliability out of the car now. With Jim in the 307 hopefully we can get some more data to get both of us quicker. Now we're getting no real data with him in the Honda Accord, which is completely different. Mine is ultra-quick in a straight line; his is, well, a little different! Thanks to Tom for his time. Interviews and text © 2003 www.BTCCinfo.co.uk . |