ROUND 10 – ELF Renault Clio Cup
Donington Park, Leicestershire, September 8/9 2007

Donington Deals a Double Blow

Round ten of the ELF Renault Clio Cup, saw the ever popular single-make saloon car series join the Renault ‘World Series’ tour on its UK leg. With crowds of over 100,000 expected at Donington Park during the weekend, the Team Gladman father and son racing duo of Jonathan and David Shepherd, were looking forward to an exciting weekend of racing at the penultimate championship round.

With the 3.5 litre, 425bhp World Series single-seaters heading the bill, it was the larger 2.5 mile Grand Prix circuit layout being used for the weekend. Neither driver had raced the Clios on the GP track before and during qualifying, both drivers suffered lack of heat in the rear tyres along with many of the other Clio drivers.

With only six laps at their disposal during the qualifying stint, it was going to be right at the end when the tyre temperatures would provide the best times. Both Jonathan and David were in the same group and qualified 20th and 10th respectively, with ‘Dreaded Dave’ being the happier of the two as they prepared for their qualification race later on Saturday afternoon.

Only 19 drivers go through from each of the qualification races on Saturday afternoon, to establish the grid of 38 cars for Sundays final. Jonathan needed to make some places to secure his grid slot and made a great start to be in 15th place at the end of the first lap however then the red flags came out due to six cars tumbling out of the race, several ending-up on their roofs. This resulted in a restart from original grid positions. Thanks to the empty grid slots ahead of him on the restart, Jonathan drove a conservative race and finished 14th and happy to be through. David meanwhile battled throughout initially dropping back, then regaining places to finish where he started in 10th position.

On Sunday morning the weather was fine and both cars were immaculately prepared as always, by the dedicated Amery Motorsport team. With the crowds gathering, the atmosphere was building as the Team Gladman duo mentally prepared to race in front of their biggest crowd to date.

After several false starts the Union Jack flag was dropped to signal  the start of the race and both the cars made a good start, however David was pushed wide going into the first corner “Redgate’ and dropped several places. Jonathan meanwhile had been hit from behind, pushing his bodywork against his left rear tyre which eventually punctured, but not before his steering was damaged in a further incident. So with no choice but to pit for a new tyre, Jonathans race was over, despite returning to the circuit to complete the remaining laps.

David having recovered from his early incident continued to make places back and was crawling all over the pack of Clio’s in front of him. Inevitably there was plenty of paint-swapping going on as he drove through to finish in the points in 17thplace. However David’s delight was cut-short following a visit to the Clerk of the Course for an alleged push on Jamie Cleland  (son of former Touring Car ace, John Cleland).  The eventual punishment was a fine and three points on his licence along with his three hard fought points from the race also being deducted.

A rather disgruntled David stated, “You’ve got to stick-out your elbows to race in this series, I just happened to be battling with a big name on the grid, no further comment”.

You can watch the ELF Renault Clio Cup on ITV1’s Motorsport UK on Sunday evenings, check programme listings for times.

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