21-year-old rising Midlothian racing driver, Colin Noble, scored a third consecutive podium finish in European competition at Silverstone over the weekend as he anchored the Ecurie Ecosse / Nielsen Racing team to a fighting finish around the full Silverstone Grand Prix circuit in the 4 Hours of Silverstone, Round 4 of the 2018 European Le Mans Series (ELMS).
After scoring a pair of second places in hotly contested races in the ELMS and supporting Michelin Le Mans Cup races in Austria last month, Colin, together with team-mates Alex Kapadia and Christian Stubbe Olsen, staged a fighting performance in an 18-car LMP3 field of 450 bhp Nissan V8-powered sports prototypes. Their collective effort kept them in the hunt for a podium position throughout the four-hour race, which was peppered with incidents.
After Olsen had secured a good position from the start, and Kapadia had made further progress through the field it was left for Noble to attack in the final hour. The fight for the win was made all the more interesting as he was pushing to catch his regular team-mate in the UK LMP3 Cup, Tony Wells, who drives in the ELMS for a rival team.
With just over half an hour remaining, the gap was 34 seconds between two identical cars. Noble though was on the attack and took time out of the leader wherever and whenever he could. 10 minutes left and he had halved the deficit, but time was running out and the points for second were important for the team as the championship fight developed.
Despite having to monitor his pace in the closing stages, Noble still managed to consistently take time out of the leader, just nine seconds back at the chequered flag after a drive of pace and managed aggression, squeezing the maximum out of the car, the tyres, and the Silverstone track.
The result leaves Noble and his teammates in the hunt for championship honours in the tightly fought series, They sit sixth, but just 18.5 points back with 52 still up for grabs over the final two races of the season, at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, and Portimao in Portugal.
Colin said: “I pushed really hard at the start of my stint but unfortunately we had a bit of a tyre issue with the front-left. I pushed hard with that but suffered understeer so I’m happy to have brought it home in second. If we were a little more dialled-in, we would have won here.