DONINGTON DAY 2 ABANDONED
A full day of action on Saturday at Donington Park, involving some of the best club motorsport, was sadly abandoned on the Sunday for reasons outside of the BRSCC’s control, after only a couple of the scheduled races had been completed.
A long Saturday commenced with sign-on for the Drivers Republic Caterham Roadsport A’s at 7.30 am, and ended with the BRSCC Super Mighty Mini Championship at 7.15pm. Great credit is due to the hardworking officials involved, particularly the marshals of the BRSCC, DDMC and British Motorsport Marshals Club who gave almost 12 hours of attention and commitment and manned their posts in all weathers.
The full grid of Caterham Roadsport A’s took their usual ethos of extremely close racing to the maximum, with Mike Steadman extending his championship lead with a 7 second win from Antony Sidney-Wollett in the first of their three races. The LMA Saloons, with a wide variety of exotic ex-BTCC cars, provided an exciting race which gave Chesterfield based Simon Deaton in his Mitsubishi Evo his first race win.
The BRSCC Mighty Minis was won by Chris Morgan trailed home by Ian Slark and James Lyford. In the Caterham R300 race a five car battle, involving former Caterham and British GT champion Jon Barnes, ended with James Sharrock just beating Matt Draper and Jonathan Walker split by a third of a second, or about 10 inches at the line!
Mike Jenvey took an easy victory in the Sports 2000 Duratecs in his Gunn TS6. Another Caterham race, this time for Roadsport B cars with mostly rookie drivers out of the Academy showed that once again Caterhams provide close but fair racing. A red flag after 16 minutes ensured that Trevor Fowell came out ahead of championship leader Gordon Sawyer with Paul Brannan and Andrew Harrison-Sleap in a four car train that had been battling all race.
Alan Hogg, in his Jade won the Race.tv Open Sportscar Series ahead of a 19 car grid promising much for next year. The LMA race 2 started with Andy Robinson spinning on the rolling lap and taking out three other cars before they crossed the start line. Simon Deaton, the pole sitter, failed to slow down for Redgate and went off into the gravel, never to recover, this gave Andy Harvey the lead, which he held onto despite a race long battle with Peter Challis.
A dominant win in the next Caterham Roadsport A by Graham Johnson led to the last race of the day for the BRSCC Super Mighty Mini’s, won by Gary Patterson after a superb duel with the Kirkpatrick brothers & Dave Rees.
Sunday’s action commenced with qualifying for the Alfa Romeos and Fiats, a further race for the Caterham R300’s, the first race for the Ma5da MX5’s and the last race for the Roadsport A’s, which was curtailed after the circuit was deemed unsafe to race on. Further investigation led to the remainder of the day’s activity being abandoned, with hope that these rounds will be rescheduled.
The full results for the meeting can be found at: www.tsl-timing.com/brscc/2009/92331.pdf
Peter Ritchie
