15.10.06 TURVEY AND LOCTITE CLAIM THE SILVER MEDAL Oliver Turvey and Team Loctite clinched second place in the Formula BMW UK Championship at the Silverstone finale - a truly remarkable result for a combination that didn't even join the series until one-third of the way through the season. By the time Team Loctite came into being and brought the talented but underfunded Turvey off the sidelines, six of the 20 races had already taken place. Yet the team won on its debut at Brands Hatch, and then reeled off another three victories and a string of podiums during the ensuing months, arriving at Silverstone in fourth place in the standings. Despite Turvey and Team Loctite's achievements so far this year, second place was still a lofty ambition, as their rivals Ross Curnow and Euan Hankey had relatively large point's cushions. Undaunted, Turvey got his weekend off to a perfect start with a stunningly fast and consistent performance in testing, and then a double pole position in qualifying - his fifth and sixth consecutive poles. Turvey continued that dominance in race one, leading throughout and taking his third win in a row. "The way Oliver controlled that race was uncanny," said Team Loctite Team Principal Trevor Powell. "We were keeping him informed of the gap back to the rest of the field, and each time (champion) Niall Breen got close, he would simply pull the gap back up to a second." The win put Turvey into third place in the points, but his hopes of stepping up another spot in the table were dented when he lost two positions at the start of race two. "Oliver actually made a good start, but the cars around him got away even faster," said Powell. "He ended up third behind Michael Meadows, and was stuck there for nine laps. Meadows didn't do anything unfair or dangerous, but he was a difficult man to get past." It took plenty of bravery and ingenuity to get around Meadows, and after a series of 'dummy' moves into Copse corner, Turvey finally sliced ahead into Becketts. He couldn't catch runaway leader Breen, but second was good enough to take the runner-up spot in the championship. It was easy to imagine what Turvey and Loctite might have achieved had they contested the full season… "Oliver really out-drove the opposition today and sealed it in the last few laps," said Powell. "Coming here, we saw second place in the championship as a possibility, but not something that we could realistically achieve, because the maths just didn't seem to be in our favour. So we're delighted that we were able to do it. This is the ideal end to an amazing season." It's not quite over for Turvey and Team Loctite yet, though. The organisers announced on the eve of the Silverstone weekend that the top two in the championship would receive a free entry for the BMW World Finals at Valencia in Spain. Having proved himself against Britain's best, Turvey will now take on the cream of Germany, Asia and America's young racing talent. On his current form, he will head abroad as one of the favourites. << back to news