07-02-17 Winter League Round 5

Another good track design and with only three more rounds after tonight everyone was keen to do well to increase their chances of being a league trophy winner.

Qualifying
James Hart was top qualifier in the GT12 class a lap ahead of Louis Parker second, Mark Deacon third and Ashley King in fourth place. The fastest lap being set by Louis.
Steve Donald was best in F2 being a lap clear of Stephen Deacon with Matt Popejoy third.
Courtney Orme was the leader in F3 just over a second quicker than league leader Paul Carter and John Stringer took third spot.

In the V12 Mardave class Mike Simpson took pole position for the final despite his car breaking down in round 2, Roy Matthews took second place – well done Roy the investment in a new set of tyres certainly paid dividends. Wes Wray was third and it was good to see new member Harvey Forster in his first league race.

Finals
First up was the mardave class where Paul Galbraith the sole representative of “Team Galbraith” this week was keen to improve on his fifth place in qualifying, the word in the pits was that he is not letting his sons Jordan and Joshua race again until he has collected enough league points to beat them!
A very entertaining race as usual with Mike winning, Paul finishing second and Alex Forster third.

With Courtney Orme leading the cars away from the grid in the GT12 C final could he get the win to give him maximum points from the evening?. A poor first three laps dropped him well down the field and into a battle for second place with John Stringer and Jack Walsh. At the finish Paul Carter won and is now hot favourite to take the F3 title, Courtney recovered well to take second place and John was third.

The GT12 B final had the makings of a close race with all the F2 drivers plus Bob Harley F1 on pole. What a race it turned out to be with all drivers making very few errors and lapping at similar speed. Bob had the quickest lap and Steve was just 0.02 seconds slower and eventually these two pulled away from the rest of the field. Who would be first to the finishing line – it was the experience of Bob Harley that won the day with Steve finishing in second place followed by Daniel Lacey, Stephen Deacon and Matt Popejoy all one lap down.

With just the A final left there was a lot of rivalry in the pits between Ashley King and Mark Deacon over who would finish in front. Having qualified in third place ahead of Ashley, Mark was “quietly confident” – (if that’s possible) of beating Ashley once again.
So the pressure was on and with James Hart on pole the race got underway with the rest of the field in hot pursuit, unfortunately Mark had a very slow first lap dropping him to the back of the field although it did make it easier to take a photograph with the car stationary! Louis had also some ground to make up and in doing so set the fastest lap of the race, eventually finishing second behind the winner yet again James Hart. Ashley finished an excellent third place and Mark fought his way back up the field to finish fourth. A super race to watch.