Heading into the Rockingham 500, Darren Manning and Team St George were always going to be at a disadvantage to their competitors.

A new driver and a new team, both were making their race debuts. Nobody would have been criticised had they suggested that they expected little from the team this weekend. In the event the team excelled in achieving their target for the weekend (just to finish the race) and more, and Manning even showed the way back to racing-school to many of the very experienced field of seasoned regulars. Read on...


The build up to the race:

In the pitlane and paddock area, seemingly a lot busier than last year, the Team St George garage was a little difficult to locate (from the paddock behind the pits), especially as it seemed as if they were either sharing garage space with somebody else or they just had the garage doors pulled down out the back. Other teams appeared to have a very "open-door" policy in comparison. By contrast the Mo Nunn and Fernandez Racing garages had free posters/info sheets in boxes at the back of their garage space, and team personnel were on hand at many other garages to answer any questions the public had on technical issues, etc. To be fair, the RAC stand were giving away Team St George posters, but when so much access was available to the rest of the teams garages it was a little disappointing that it was impossible to get anywhere near the St George car to have a good look at it. (*Please correct me if I'm wrong on this, it just appeared that way!).



Team St George preparing pre-race

Luckily we did manage to grab hold of Darren as he was headed back to the team's motorhome. We told him about the Unofficial Team St George Site, of which he was pretty impressed ("Brilliant, nice one mate!"), which was very nice and made all the hard work that's gone into this website worthwhile ! Despite having an immense amount of work in front of him and doubtless non-stop requests to appear somewhere to talk to someone, Darren still made a point of stopping to talk to fans in the paddock and fulfilled a barrage of requests for autographs. Being able to literally mingle in the same space as the drivers and teams is still a very new experience to European race fans and understandably there was no way our man was going to get through the day without being stopped in his tracks every few seconds ! So, thanks for taking time out for us all Darren.



Darren meeting with fans.

Other notables we managed to get access to and grab an autograph from were Shinji Nakano and Mario Dominguez, unfortunately we just missed Jimmy Vasser by a second as he came running out of his garage, with us just a few yards away from blocking his escape !! We also saw CART CEO Chris Pook having a chat with a few others and took the opportunity to say thanks to him for turning the series around and planning ahead for it's future success. He did appear genuinely touched that fans would even want to talk to him and he thanked us for our support and for coming to the race. We even got him to sign our Wide Open CART supplement (handed out free at the race) on the front cover, which was an unusual autograph to collect to say the least ! Again he seemed a bit perplexed that anyone should want his autograph but hopefully it's all letting him know that CART fans are super-impressed with the work he is doing.

The Merchandise

What else can we say than thank you very much to Team St George for treating the paying public with respect and understanding that fans don't all have a never ending supply of money.

There wasn't a great deal of official Team St George stuff to choose from, but what they were selling was very good quality and cheap.

Caps were just £7.99 when caps for all of the other teams/drivers came in at £20.00 and T-shirts were just £9.99 when T-shirts for all of the other teams/drivers were at least £20.00, although some were seen for as much as a ridiculous £30.00.

There were also large St George flags for £5.99 (prices of £10.00 to £30.00 were seen for other nations flags on some stands) and small "hand-wave" St George flags for a simple £1.00 and you can't get more cheap and cheerful than that !!

The Champ Car Grid Parade

This year saw the excellent addition of a drivers parade (in qualifying order) in matching open-topped Lotus cars before the race.

Predictably the biggest noise was made for Dario Franchitti and I was really pleased with the way the crowd were much more into the spirit of things than last year, although the fact that we had to wait around for hours for last year's race may have had something to do with how quiet we all were that time round !

As Dario was announced over the speakers the whole of Rockingham erupted into a roar of heavy-applause, horn-blowing, foot-stomping and cheering. He has of course already got a well-established and well-deserved reputation amongst the fans so it was understandable that the crowd would be well behind him. Darren was of course announced as being another home-town hero and while he didn't get the reception given to Dario it was still good to hear a load of horns going off and plenty of applause and cheering for him. There would be more to come for Darren during the race.

The Rockingham 500

The excitement of the race starting could not come soon enough, given that temperatures in the grandstands had been dropping all morning and with the breeze that had picked up it was very cold by race start.



Darren leaves the pits for the warm-up laps

Starting well down the order, Darren had a tough task ahead of him and by the end of lap one with the way Brack stormed away from the rest of the field with ease, Darren seemed to look destined to stay away from the points.



The field streams through to take the start



Ready to pounce...

Within a few laps however he was starting to look like a threat to Jimmy Vasser, and when Christian Fittipaldi faltered on the front straight Darren flew past both of them. Cue lots of pointing from the grandstands, horns lighting up the air and plenty of triumphant cheering from an amazed crowd who could not quite believe he would be doing something like passing two guys at once, never mind this early in the race.

Shinji Nakano provided the first drama of the afternoon when he appeared to lock-up his tyres going into turn 4. This looked to upset the balance of the car and the inevitable happened when he crunched into the wall, leaving both right-hand side tyres behind. This saw the yellow flag being thrown and without hesitation Darren roared into the pits to seize the moment.

Unfortunately none of the other drivers seemed to do the same for a little while and this caused a few looks of confusion as people wondered if he had done the right thing coming in so early. This knocked Darren out of sequence with the other guys as far as pit-stops were concerned, and with the subsequent yellows later in the race it was becoming impossible to tell just what position he would end up in by the last lap.

I'm not sure what the loudspeaker systems are like at other circuits, but at Rockingham it is impossible to hear any of the commentary when the race is running under green flags (we didn't have a radio to hear the Rockingham FM broadcast) and without having a really good view of the TV screens it was becoming very difficult to work out what position any of the drivers were in. We had a pretty good idea that Darren was running near the front as he passed a lot of drivers who had pitted again, but we didn't really entertain the notion that he could have been in the lead. It just didn't seem plausible at the time. Imagine then how surprised we all were when under another yellow we were able to hear the commentator announce that Darren was leading the race on his debut !!! Cue more loudness from the extremely happy crowd.



Leading the pack.

Unfortunately Darren's final pitstop didn't go so well and he dropped back down the order more than he realistically would have in perfect circumstances, so all credit to Darren that he deserved a higher finishing position than what he finally took (which was still amazing).

The next worrying point was when we spotted something not quite right with the car as it passed us in turn one. A piece was missing from the right of his rear wing, this we assumed would cause no end of problems and we sadly expected to see Darren drop back down the order. Apparently the team got on the radio to tell him what was going on and he was able to make a few adjustments within the car (to rollbars, etc) that ensured he would lose no speed or downforce.

All too quickly the race came to it's conclusion, with Britain's own Dario Franchitti the eventual victor. This was Dario's first win on home soil and, perhaps almost equally as important to him, it was amazingly his first ever win on an oval circuit.

Darren was just as much a credit to his home crowd, both he and Team St George giving us far more than we ever could have expected from them on their debut, finishing in a superb 9th place - more than many of the top names could manage. Darren said after the race that they were purposefully avoiding racing the car at it's highest potential. The aim was to secure reliability and avoid getting into any accidents. This showed a good commonsense and maturity. The temptation to go hell for leather must have been a great one, given how well Darren was running when he wasn't even at full steam. We can only imagine and be intrigued by how high up Darren may have finished had he gone full-force for the whole race...interesting times ahead in his CART career I suspect.

The atmosphere at the end of the race was electric with a fantastic podium ceremony that everybody ran out of the grandstands to see. A brilliant and exciting British CART race, with two British drivers, a British winner, and an awesome record-breaking debut drive from another British driver taking points home. We literally could not have asked for anymore.

Darren Manning's record-breaking FACT

Darren led the race on two separate occassions, something which has never been done by any other driver in their debut race, in the history of CART. Something to be extremely proud of.

The Aftermath

Well, it was obviously all really good experience for Darren, which will no doubt have brought him to the attention of teams up and down the pitlane. Anyone who can overtake a driver of the quality of Jimmy Vasser and score points in any CART race, nevermind his debut, is well worth a fulltime drive.

It isn't a certainty by any means that Team St George will run for the whole of the 2003 season. Rockingham boss David Grace recently said that Rockingham would not be prepared to fund the team if sponsors cannot be found, it remains to be seen if the funds can be raised to go fulltime next year.

Imagining they will race next season, before this weekend's race I would have said that I believed Johnny Herbert would be Team St George's instant choice as driver should they only field a one-car effort. Having seen Darren's skill behind the wheel of a Champ Car I'm now inclined to believe that there wouldn't be any reason not to give the drive to Darren instead.

Personally, I of course hope that Team St George will run all of next season and I hope they run two cars. That way they can run both Darren and Johnny. As an Englishman, that would be an ultimate dream CART team.

End of this years report!

I just want to say a big thank you to Darren and Team St George for providing us with some amazing entertainment during the race and congratulations on the excellent result.

Hope we get to see some more action from you over the whole of the next season.

(All photos on this page taken by The Unofficial Team St George Site)