BRDC Rising Star Scott McKenna narrowly missed out on a sensational maiden victory in the BTCC-supporting Porsche Carrera Cup GB championship at Knockhill last weekend (29/30 August).
Teessider McKenna entered the visit to Scotland buoyed by a second visit to the podium of his rookie season at Oulton Park just one week prior, looking to add more silverware to his collection in the fourth meeting of the Carrera Cup GB season.
Battling a deluge in initial testing, the Redline Racing man showed his pace in Friday’s official free practice sessions by taking the fight to championship leader Harry King in much more admirable conditions by setting the second fastest time of the day.
Saturday’s qualifying session was unfortunately blighted by a late red flag stoppage with just under four minutes available to pump in a good lap time. McKenna was sat eighth in his Porsche 911 at the time before his final attempts to make progress up the order, but the session did not restart, limiting the Stokesley man to eighth on the grid for the first race on Sunday morning.
The opening 30-minute race brought a reversal of fortune thankfully for McKenna, as he took advantage of retirements ahead of him to climb up the order. After offs for two Porsches ahead of him, McKenna moved up into fifth place and gave chase to Redline team-mate Dorian Mansilla for much of the race. Two safety car interruptions brought him back into the mix, but the youngster came home fifth to score more crucial points and finish as second best of the rookie class drivers.
The partially reversed grid was again kind to the Redline driver who was put on pole position for race two, and he made sure of his escape by easing out to a lead of over five seconds before the danger man, King, made his way through to be the chaser.
McKenna threw the kitchen sink and more to hang on as the faster Parker car closed in, setting up a final lap shoot-out. McKenna rebuffed the series leader for a full lap, but lost grip on the dirty line and slid wide at Clark corner, hanging on for second place and another Rookie Cup win – his fourth of the season and third overall podium.
Despite victory being narrowly denied, McKenna moves up to fourth in the overall Carrera Cup GB standings and second in the Rookie points during a standout maiden campaign.
The Stokesley man next heads to Thruxton on 19/20 September for the latest pair of races. Sunday races will be broadcast LIVE on ITV4 in support of the British Touring Car Championship.
Scott McKenna (#82 Redline Racing):
“So close and yet so far! We gave it absolutely everything we had in the cars on Sunday. I was on the limit trying to build as big a gap as I could to be sure that I had a chance when the faster car came through the field.
“We’re definitely closing in now on that first Carrera Cup win though and that gives us a big boost having the experience to run up front in clear air and fight for the top spot.
“We’ve got lots of work to do and improvements in our locker as our experience grows, but some good progress has been made and we made a strong recovery from qualifying to show our fight after we were hard done by with some bad timing of the red flags. On pace, we were often the closest to spoiling the party.
“Thank you to Redline, my family and sponsors and everybody for their support again, and we’ll go again at Thruxton next month after a break and come back fighting.”
Photo Credits: Dan Bathie/Porsche
Scott McKenna 