Caerphilly racer Graham Cole battled through to earn a ninth-place finish at the Nogaro circuit in southern France last weekend, despite suffering a “freak” puncture in qualifying.

As a result of the puncture, Cole started the race in 27th position out of 29.

Cole, who was driving the Richwest Engingeering BPS7 Prototype, said: “Looking back at our weekend that freak incident in qualifying really put us on the back foot from the outset.

“We arrived at Nogaro in optimistic mood having completed a fairly successful set of test sessions in Silverstone last month. The intention there was to iron out any issues with our new bodywork.”

Cole changed the bodywork on his car during lockdown, in a bid to improve the steering. Richard West, of Caerphilly-based Richwest Engineering, had also redesigned shock absorbers on the car to improve its performance.

After successful test runs at Silverstone, confidence in the car’s performance was high before heading to France, where Cole is competing at three races promoted by the French TTE/Free Proto organisation.

Cole had missed the start of the season due to the pandemic and the costs of Covid testing needed to travel abroad.

But despite the successful tests at Silverstone, it became apparent at Nogaro that the car still had some aerodynamic issues.

Cole said the front of the car “porpoised” between speeds of 125 and 145mph, meaning the front of the car bounced up and down, making it unstable. However, this problem was addressed before the race.

He said: “Having overcome that issue we went into qualifying in an optimistic mood, but just after we’d warmed up the new tyres, another car tried a stupid overtake and touched the rear passenger side tyre, knocking it off the bead.

“I hadn’t realised what had happened at the time but as the handling worsened I pulled into the pits where the problem was plainly visible. Given the relatively short qualifying session we didn’t have time to change the tyre, so we were effectively eliminated and would have to start the 40-minute race at the back of the grid.

“Come race day we found ourselves in 27^th position on a 29-car grid and unlike Formula 1, the cars on the TTE Proto grid are all fairly evenly matched. 

“Nevertheless, we battled through the field to finish in ninth position. We were pretty pleased with that result given that we had overtaken a number of the hugely expensive Carbon chassis Norma Prototypes during the race and notably all the cars that finished ahead of us were actually Carbon Cars of that marquee.”

Next up in the three-race programme is the TTE/Free Proto race at the F1 circuit in Magny Cours, which will take place between October 22 and October 24.

Following that, Cole will race at the famous Le Mans circuit.

After the Nogaro race, Cole thanked his supporters and service crew, as well as sponsors Richwest Engineering.