12 July 1999 - Cadman/Frost Take 4th Place in Grand Prix GT Support

Works driver Justin Cadman and Shoreham based Simon Frost drove the Cadini Motorsport Marcos Mantis to a fine fourth place in the GT3 category of the Privilege Insurance GT Championship at Silverstone last weekend.

The Cadini Mantis, flanked by a million pounds worth of Verve Cliquot McLaren and a Slick 50 Porsche

Frost took the car for the first practice/qualifying session on Thursday and it was here that he thought he might have bitten off more than he could chew. Handling the Mantis monster, capable of 170 mph, around a circuit he did not know caught him out as he spun out on three occasions and struggled to get on the pace. However, he showed great skill and nerve to keep the car out of the gravel traps and brought it back in successfully at the end of the session.

The team forgets to tell Cadman, an extra 250 bhp means the Emka McLaren Wins

Cadman took the seat for the second practice/qualifying session on Friday and although he too was suffering from a lack of testing and accurate set-up on the car, managed to set the day's fastest time by 2 tenths of a second to put the Cadman/Frost combination on the front row of the grid for Sunday's race.

The team decided to run Frost in the first 25 minute session, believing that competing in front of a British Grand Prix crowd of 120,000 spectators with 38 other GT racing cars on the grid was pressure enough, without having time to accumulate more nerves. "The pressure was immense", said Frost. "It was my first rolling start and when the pole man went over the line and we all floored the throttles, it was awesome. There must have been over 17,000 horsepower between the cars, all heading for Copse Corner at over 130 mph."

Frost improved dramatically during his 25 minute race session, mixing it with Lister Storms, McLarens, Porsche GT1s and Dodge Vipers, holding on to 7th place as he came in for the driver change at the 25 minute mark. The team switched drivers quickly and Cadman screamed out of the pits intent on closing the front runners down. Despite the field being very strung out, Cadman still made his mark as he settled into the groove and methodically took 3 places back on subsequent laps before bringing the Cadini car home in a highly credible fourth place.

Having put the fastest qualifying time in on the Friday session and returning the fastest lap in the race, Cadman said, "This is the first time I've driven the car this year and I wasn't very confident with the back end grip. I wasn't powering out of the corners as hard as I would have liked so to get the fastest lap by over 1/2 a second was a real bonus."

Team manager John Cadman was also pleased with result; "Simon was over 7 seconds a lap quicker in the race which is a massive improvement and Justin was the quickest driver out there. If we can produce this performance with no testing, one rookie driver and another who hasn't raced the car this year, we'll have no problem winning races with a full budget."

Simon Frost would like to thank his sponsors for the day, Frosts of Shoreham and Circuit Alert, whilst the Team would like to thank Foretell Media, CD UK, Fujitsu Computers and Designer Signs.