Masters Historic Festival 2024: Masters Endurance Legends

The More Modern Historics!

Race 1

Frieser romps away to victory in first Masters Endurance Legends race at Brands

In his opening stint, Keith Frieser was still pressured by Jack Fabby in the quick LMP3 Duqueine D08, but after the stops the Canadian romped home to claim a dominant victory in the first Masters Endurance Legends race of the Masters Historic Festival weekend at Brands Hatch.

“The guys here in the P3 car, they chased me so hard”, said Frieser. “I wish I was young again, but I worked very hard and I just had a little more horse power is why I stayed ahead. But it was very fun for me. And then after the pit stops it was a bit lonely, but just tried to keep doing steady laps. So yeah, all good. In race 2, I’m just going to try to do the same!”

“It was a brilliant race from our point of view”, said Fabby. “We had a good start and managed to stay with Keith for the first lap because I thought he was just going to rock it off down the straight and leave us in the dust, but I managed to just stay enough with him through the fast stuff. And then the track conditions were quite a bit different, I’d say, today compared to yesterday, so we had to manage our pushing to stay with Keith and not go over the line and find out the hard way that you’ve done too much. Alfie did a great job bringing the car home and the fact that we had a few issues with our radio and what have you, so I was on the radio trying to, ‘Is anyone talking to me? Can someone talk to me?’ But no, really happy. We did a really good job yesterday and I think it’s nice to consolidate it today.”

With Alfie Briggs at the wheel, the Duqueine went on to snatch second overall and the LMP3 class win, while Mike Newton’s MG Lola EX264 fought back to beat the David Brise/Alan Purbrick Lola B09/80 to third overall and LMP2 class victory.

“Such a good track”, said Briggs. “The elevation changes at turn one. That’s my favorite corner. I had a few moments around the back – probably not best to say what happened! But no, it’s good fun. Good fun in the LMP3.”

“The track conditions were interesting”, said Newton. “For the first few laps it was very, very slippery and by the time we came off the brakes it was weight from the front end of the turn in, but I think it was the same for everyone. And then after the pit stop we had an engine shutdown as I came out of Graham Hill. I started to switch everything on, switch everything on, wait, and fortunately it all came back again, so that delayed me a bit in the second half, but then got my head down and clawed back up to third, so a good day.”

Set to finish fifth overall, Craig Davies and Ron Maydon took second in the LMP3 class in their Ligier JSP3 but Maydon then managed to pip Purbrick to fourth overall on the final lap. Delayed by a pitstop after the opening lap, Andy Cummings and Matt Graham salvaged sixth overall and third in class in their LMP2 Morgan Pescarolo 01.

In the final race before lunch, the Masters Endurance Legends grid came out for their first race of the weekend. Kieth Frieser’s Union Jack-liveried Zytek 09S led away from Jack Fabby in the LMP3 Duqueine who kept the Canadian on his toes into the second lap. Behind them, Mike Newton’s MG Lola EX264 completed a flying opening lap in third, followed through by David Brise in Newton’s class rival, the Lola-Judd B09/80. The third LMP2 car in class, however, the Andy Cummings/Matt Graham Morgan Pescarolo 01, was into the pits after the first lap, but the issue wasn’t terminal, as Cummings went out again. For Neil Glover in the Ligier JSP3, however, it looked like race over, seemingly disallowing Michael Lyons to race the machine for his stint later on. But he, too, went back out after a long stay in the pits.

Three laps into the race, Frieser still couldn’t shake off Fabby, the pair of them having dropped Newton by 8 seconds, with Brise and Craig Davies in the other Ligier JSP3 each trailing by two more seconds, as Colin Sowter in the Ferrari 458 GT3 assumed sixth overall in the leading GT car.

Three more laps gone, and Frieser and Fabby were still circulating almost in unison, but Newton had lost ground to Brise and Davies, as the MG Lola dropped down to fifth. On lap 9, the gap at the front was still the same – Fabby following in Frieser’s tracks but unable to power past the Zytek. Brise in third was 18 seconds down, with Davies a further 7 seconds in arrears.

With the pit window open, none of the runners opted to go at the first opportunity, but Fabby was in next time around to hand over to Alfie Briggs while also serving his 20-second elite-driver time penalty. He was followed by David Brise who made way for Alan Purbrick in the Lola B09/80. On lap 14, Davies came in for Ron Maydon’s second stint, with Sowter also pitting. Frieser then came in from the lead to pit on lap 15, with Newton among the ones still to pit, but that would happen later on the same lap.

When all the stops and penalities had panned out, Frieser held a much more comfortable lead of 32 seconds over Purbrick, with Briggs two seconds behind the Lola, and Newton a further 19 seconds in arrears. Maydon was fifth ahead of the delayed Morgan Pescarolo, with Matt Graham now at the wheel, and the leading GT of Colin Sowter. Neil Glover, meanwhile, ended a difficult morning with the retirement of his Ligier.

Soon, Briggs had reclaimed second place from Purbrick, but even though the Lola initially fought back, Briggs was firmly back in the runner-up spot by lap 18. Ten minutes still remained on the clock, and Frieser now held a sizeable 41-second lead over Briggs, who had dropped Purbrick by five seconds in two more laps. Newton, however, had found a bit of pace in the MG Lola and continued to close of the LMP2 leader in third.

On lap 21, Frieser had got into a true groove to produce the fastest lap of the race with a 1.23.7, lapping two seconds a lap faster than Briggs. With some seven minutes remaining, Newton had cut his deficit to Purbrick to six seconds, and looked odds-on for third overall and the LMP2 class win. Next time around, it was just two seconds. In fifth overall, Maydon was safely in second place in the LMP3 class, behind the Fabby/Briggs Duqueine, as the Cummings/Graham Morgan held third in the LMP2 class with sixth overall.

On lap 24, Newton had done it, outbraking Purbrick into Paddock Hill Bend to claim third overall and the LMP2 class win. At the front, no-one was unable to stop Frieser from claiming a dominant win in the Zytek. In second place, Jack Fabby and Alfie Briggs bagged a strong second overall with the leading LMP3 car, with Newton in third as another class winner. The Purbrick/Brise Lola was pipped to fourth on the final lap by the Davies/Maydon Ligier, with the Cummings/Graham Morgan in sixth. Colin Sowter looked set to claim the GT class but his Ferrari went off into the barriers one lap from the end.

Race 2

Frieser gets repeat win in second Masters Endurance Legends race at Brands

Keith Frieser hauled himself onto the top step of the Masters Endurance Legends podium for the second time in one day, as his Zytek 09S LMP1 made if two wins from two starts in the Masters Historic Festival weekend at Brands Hatch. The Canadian was made to work a lot harder for his second win, though, as Jack Fabby in the Duqueine-Nissan D08 started by Alfie Briggs proved to be on fire, the LMP3 car eating whole chunks of time out of Frieser’s initial lead after the mid-race pitstops.

“Yeah, it was very good”, said Frieser, who had been unworried about the Duqueine closing in. “This one was a little bit easier. I just got it into my head to get going right away. So, there was a bit of a gap, so it was quite good.”

Until two laps from the end, the result appeared to be a carbon copy of the morning’s race, but then Fabby ground to a halt halfway into the penultimate tour, seemingly having run out of fuel. This handed Mike Newton second overall and the LMP2 class win in his MG Lola EX264, with the Morgan Pescarolo 01 of Andy Cummings and Matt Graham a close third.

“You know, I knew that it was the tyres that we’d used at Spa last weekend, so I knew I had to pace this all the way through”, Newton explained. “I wasn’t too worried about dropping a couple of places at the start, and just maintaining steady laps all the way through, and the strategy came to me as we got to the end. Great battle with Andy and Matt. That was wonderful.”

“I got a good start, chipped away, got past Ron, then got past Mike, and just got my head down”, said Cummings of his opening stint. “And then I was kind of maintaining the gap to Keith and Alfie, but just couldn’t quite close the gap. But, otherwise, cracking race. Really enjoyed it.”

“Andy did a great first stint and had us in a really great position, and he had pulled a nice gap on Mike”, said Graham, “and I thought, I just put my head down and kept doing the lap time, that we’d be able to maintain the gap. But Mike turned it up, caught me, and then we had a great battle the last few laps there. It was close, clean racing, just what you want in a series like this.”

The David Purbrick/David Brise Lola B09/80 took fourth ahead of the Craig Davies/Ron Maydon Ligier JSP3 which claimed first in the LMP3 class after the Duqueine’s late demise. In seventh overall, Colin Sowter netted GT honours in the Ferrari 458 GT3.

“It was a fairly lonely but very enjoyable race” said Sowter. “No problems, not a lot to report in. I was just very polite to all the prototypes when they came past me, because I wasn’t racing anybody. So I made sure I kept out of their way, kept it all nice and clean. Basically a very smooth, trouble-free race.”

As the final Masters race of the weekend, the Masters Endurance Legends machines came out towards 5.30pm for their second outing at Brands Hatch. Starting from the front, Frieser’s Zytek 09S soon moved away from Alfie Briggs in the Duqueine D08, Mike Newton in the MG Lola EX264, with Andy Cummings in the Morgan Pescarolo LMP2 passing Craig Davies in the LMP3 Ligier JSP3. Behind them, Alan Purbrick in the LMP2 Lola B09/80 held off Michael Lyons in the second Ligier, with Colin Sowter leading the GT class in his Ferrari 458 GT3.

Three laps in, Cummings was on the move as Newton proved to be his latest victim, with Lyons moving ahead of Purbrick. Frieser’s lead had flattened out at 1.5 seconds but Cummings wasn’t far away either. Newton dropped back into the clutches of Davies and Lyons, as Purbrick lost touch. On lap 5, Lyons went through to steal fifth from Davies.

On lap 8, Frieser had cemented his lead over Briggs at around 1.8 seconds, but Cummings was dropping back as the Morgan now trailed the leading Zytek by 8 seconds. In an entertaining battle for fourth, Newton had to work hard to hold off both Lyons and Davies, but the MG Lola driver succumbed to Lyons’ pressure on lap 9.

The pit window was now open, and Sowter proved to be first one in on lap 11. Next time around, Briggs came in to make way for Jack Fabby, who by regulation had to wait for a few more second to serve his elite-driver penalty. Frieser continued to press on in the lead, but Michael Lyons was truly on fire with a fastest lap of the race in the Ligier, having opened up a six-second gap to Newton. But he, too, would have to sit out an additional 20 seconds as an elite driver. Meanwhile, Alan Purbrick handed over to David Brise in the Lola B09/80.

On lap 14, the race leader was in, directly followed by Andy Cummings who would pass on the Morgan to Matt Graham, with Newton also coming in. At the same time, Fabby nicked fastest lap of the race from Lyons, who right at the moment seemed in trouble as the Ligier suddenly slowed and ground to a halt. Davies in the other Ligier made way for Ron Maydon, as we waited for all the stops to pan out.

15 minutes remained, and now Frieser led Fabby by 22 seconds and Graham by six more ticks. Newton and Maydon were close, though, as they were in visual contact with the Morgan. The Canadian in the lead was made to work for it, though, as Fabby took out two seconds off Frieser’s lead, as the youngster went a second and a half than he had managed in race 1!

Behind the leader and the chasing Fabby, the race was on for the final podium spot, as Mike Newton got on song to slash his deficit to Graham, and on lap 21, the older LMP2 demoted the more recent LMP2 for third overall and the class lead. In fifth, Maydon held 17 seconds over Brise and looked secure for second in the LMP3 class.

With five minutes still on the clock, Fabby got within ten seconds of Frieser, which at this rate would mean that it would be close. It wouldn’t be quite enough, though, and then dramatically, Fabby ran out of fuel on the penultimate lap. Newton thus took second, narrowly leading the Morgan Pescarolo across the line, while Brise managed to pass Maydon before the end of the race. Sowter finished the race in seventh overall as the GT class winner.