Following the engine damage at Rockingham, TenguDo Motorsport pulled out all the stops to ensure Rexy II had a loan replacement engine ready for the Nippon Challenge support races for the DTM meeting at Brands Hatch. The engine itself had recently been rebuilt and was residing in another car, but was untested.



Nerves were jangling on the run-up to qualifying with lots of incidents in the previous sessions and exciting (and noisy!) practice from the DTM cars. Unfortunately, there seemed to be issues with the new motor. It had problems revving out. As the session progressed the engine temperature began to rise. Obviously, this affected Karen's performance and she qualified about 2/3rds of the way down the field.

She started fairly well in Race 1, but an early incident saw the cars having to lap behind the Safety Car. After several laps, it had been decided that the incident was so severe as to require the race to be abandoned. Luckily, no-one was seriously injured. Due to a similar incident in the VW Scirocco support race there was no time left on the day to re-run the Nippon race.



Race 2 therfore saw everyone retain their original starting positions from qualifying. TenguDo Motorsport had tried everything to try and get the car running correctly, they even managed to scratch build an Intercooler spray system from the windscreen washer system of Karen's Mercedes Sprinter support vehicle! It was all to no avail, as the car was as bad as before and Karen was forced to limp around and finish 2nd from last.

It was a very depressing end to a long weekend. It was also to mark the premature end of Karen's season. It had been decided that the loaned engine would be returned to TenguDo and Karen would need to source a new one for TenguDo to fettle ready for the following season. Meanwhile she would miss Nippon Challenge rounds at Mallory Park and Pembrey.