14-02-17 Winter League Round 6

Gavin Maciver takes second place behind winner James Hart in the A final, Mark Deacon moves up into second place in division 1, three points clear of Ashley King.
Steve Donald looks certain for promotion after taking another maximum points in division 2.
New member McKenzie Wallace wins the C final.
Alex Forster takes the lead in the Mardave division 2.

Qualifying
James Hart was quickest after round 1 with Ashley King second with some impressive driving, Gavin Maciver, Steve Donald, Bob Harley and Darren Ford were next a lap down.
Paul Carter was best in division 3, McKenzie Wallace was second and John Stringer third.
For a variety of reasons there was a much depleted field this week in the Mardave class, Mike Simpson was out in front with Alex Forster being top in division 2.
In round 2 Nick Wallace had a good drive which moved him up to fifth position overall just ahead of Mark Deacon in the GT12 class.
In the last qualifying round Mark Deacon shot up into third place overall a lap ahead of both Ashley King and Steve Donald setting up yet another interesting final.

Finals
With only five cars in the Mardave final this week it was not so eventful as usual, Mike Simpson had a convincing win, Alex Forster and Wes Wray had a great race for second place with Wes making a good start to get past Alex on the first lap, his lead did not last long however with Alex retaking second spot on lap 3. He steadily pulled ahead until a couple of slow laps 16 and 17 let Wes through and who finished strongly to claim second place with Alex third.

Paul Carter was on pole for the GT12 C final but it was car 2 driver McKenzie Wallace who had the better start and went into the lead, Paul hit the front again on the second lap only to be overtaken again on lap 4. McKenzie then put in some very consistent driving to gradually extend his lead and win being a lap ahead of Paul in second place and John Stringer in third. Good race this – well done McKensie!

The B final saw a mixture of division 1 and 2 drivers in action, Darren Ford make up for below par qualifying to take the win being 2 laps ahead of second place driver Bob Harley and Matt Popejoy in third.

So just the A final left where James Hart put on a display of awesome driving to post the best round of the evening with 38 laps, Gavin Maciver was also going exceptionally well but was hampered in the last dozen laps of the race when his front suspension came loose but still managed to finish in second place with 37 laps. That left Mark Deacon, Ashley King, Steve Donald and Nick Wallace to battle it out for the remaining places. Surely Ashley could not beat Mark for the second week running! It was very close with very little between the two of them, Steve Donald moved into fourth place part way through the race but Ashley got past him again. It went down to the wire with Mark taking third place , Ashley fourth 2.56 seconds adrift, Steve fifth and Nick sixth. A fantastic race to watch, it does not get much better than this. Come on Ashley lets see if you can even the score next week as Mark is now three points ahead of you in the league.