07-03-17 Winter League Round 7

The penultimate round of the winter league produced an excellent evenings racing on a great track design.


Qualifying
In the GT12 class James Hart was quickest after round 1, but in form Louis Parker took over the lead in round 2 and consolidated pole position for the final with another fast run in the last qualifying round. Darren Ford was also flying and took second place ahead of James in third, setting up the prospect of a great final.

Steve Donald was the best placed F2 driver with Stephen Deacon eventually getting the better of Daniel Lacey in round 3 to take second place, Daniel being third.

In F3 David Snowden and Paul Carter were four laps ahead of everybody else, David being quickest, Paul second and Courtney Orme third.

In the mardave class Mike Simpson qualified for pole position in the final with Roy Matthews second and Alex Forster third.

Finals
The mardave final produced the closest finish of the evening, Mike Simpson was the winner and with just over a minute of the race remaining Roy Matthews was in second place with a five second advantage over Alex Forster in third spot. All this changed on lap 21 when Roy encountered a problem with his car and Alex shot into second place with a 4 second lead. Roy pulled this back to under 2 seconds with a lap to go, Alex made a minor error on the last lap resulting in a wheel to wheel race for the finishing line which Alex won by 2/100th of a second to claim second place by half a wheel – what a finish! – well done Alex.

John Stringer won the GT12 D final, Keith Sutherland still working on his new cars setup was second and Callum Howard was third, a close race this with all the first three drivers finishing just a few seconds apart.

David Snowden had a good drive in the C final to take the win, league leader Paul Carter was second and Courtney Orme third.

The B final was a good race with all the drivers evenly matched for speed, Steve Donald and Gavin Maciver had a great battle with Steve eventually taking the win with Gavin a couple of seconds down. Stephen Deacon (the only “Team Deacon” driver this week) was also on good form and took third place.

Louis Parker was on pole position for the A final and made a good start, James Hart got ahead of car 2 Darren Ford on lap 3 and set his sights on trying to catch Louis. The race for the win was between these three drivers, Louis had his car set up well and was lapping very quickly and kept James at bay until lap 10 where he eventually took the lead and went on to win the race. Good stuff to watch this, great performances from all the drivers.

So with just one round of the league left several of the league positions will be decided next week . In the GT12 F1 Mark Deacon has a slender advantage on just 3 points over Ashley King for third place. In F2 a good result by Matt Popejoy could see him snatch second place fro Daniel Lacey and in F3 it is still possible for John Stringer to push Courtney Orme out of second place.
Finally in the mardave F2 Alex Forster leads Roy Matthews by just 3 points – on this weeks results this will definitely be close at the end of the evening. So roll on next week – no pressure drivers!