Marbella Racing Drivers Club (MRDC) success in the Andalucian Historic GTI Championships

The 2016 GTI championship started last weekend, known for it’s exciting and closely run races. Race meetings are held throughout the year in Andalucia that will take in circuits such as Jerez, Ascari, Cartagena, Guadix, Almeria and the new Andalucia Circuit. With all drivers racing heavily regulated race prepared MK2 Golf GTI 1.8 (8 valve) cars. Although some of our MRDC members have much faster and exotic race cars, they still choose to compete in the GTI championship as it’s the most competitive, rather than just cheque book racing where the person with the most money buys the fastest car and wins. 

The first meeting of the year was held at Guadix Circuit on the 20th March, with new rules, including; weighting down winners of previous races and the second race of each meeting being a reverse grid, designed to keep the grid tight and guarantee incredible battles & action. 

The Marbella Racing Drivers Club (MRDC) entered 5 drivers into the 2016 Historic Touring Car & GTI Championships, to take on other racing teams and individual competitors. 

MRDC founder member Peter Bowerman originally from Chigwell Essex and MD of the successful Overseas Dreams real estate agency in Marbella & La Cala De Mijas is already a Historic Touring Car Champion and two times previous winner of the GTI championship making him one of the favourites for this year. Peter had 2 years away from racing whilst expanding his business, but is now back with his trusty black, battle scared GTI nicknamed “zee panzer”. 

Both races had their fair share of accidents and the first race nearly had a full grid pile up straight off the line. However Peter stamped his authority straight away by winning both races and will now have weight added to his car for the next meeting in July.

MRDC’s Charlie Limon had a real battle on track and came 3rd in his freshly painted white GTI but also suffered damage after a collision with a competing teams blue GTI. Other MRDC team drivers Stephen Pattrick, Norwegian Hans Peter Dalen and Dutch Elger Bouwman could not make the first race meeting due to injuries or other commitments but are all raring to challenge Peter in the next round of the championship at Circuito Cartagena. Other MRDC members Chris Tunmore, John Jones & Caino Shirovay came to support and help the team prepare the cars in the pits with head mechanic Martin McCann.

If you are a Petrol-Head and interested in finding out more about motor-racing, trackdays or classic car events in Spain or just interested in following all the news, photos and onboard camera action, you can contact the MRDC at www.MarbellaRacingDriversClub.com