ROCHE ROBBED X2 AT ANGLESEY
William Smith managed a superb win in the ITC Compliance Caterham Supersport Championship – Photo: SnappyRacers
The BRSCC North Western Centre’s second meeting on the weekend of 7th/8th May took place over two days at the fabulous Anglesey Circuit which, apart from rain early on Sunday morning, was bathed in glorious sunshine throughout as an action packed 18 race schedule for Mazdas and Caterhams was played out.
Serial Mazda winner, Tom Roche, competed in both the MX5 SuperCup and the MX5 Championship for Mk1 cars. In the trio of races for each, Roche was twice in a position to take a hat-trick of victories but the fates robbed him on both occasion.
He won the first two MX5 SuperCup contests having cruised into the distance as Alan Henderson and James Blake-Baldwin squabbled over the minor placings in the opener and then had this duo right on his back bumper throughout the wet second instalment – neither could get ahead of him however. Roche looked to be heading for 3 out of 3 as he led the field into the first corner at the beginning of the SuperCup’s final escapade but he got hung out to dry on the outside of The Banking and Church corners allowing 4 or 5 cars to take advantage of his compromised track position and push him down the order. Henderson was out in front and would never be headed as the rest of the field fought it out amongst themselves. Roche finished less than a second away from being runner-up when the chequered flag appeared but as Blake-Baldwin and Jonathan Greensmith were just ahead of him, he was classified fourth. Henderson's results mean he had the points lead and therefore would be the SuperCup representative in Barcelona for the European MX-5 Cup Final in a couple of months time.
Once again there were so many entries in the MX5 Championship that they had to be split into Groups A & B. Roche qualified in the former section and first time out he took the flag a whisker ahead of Oliver Allwood with James Harris in third. After a dramatic last lap, Allwood got ahead and crossed the line first in encounter Number 2 only to be penalised and dropped down to second by the stewards who were unhappy with his driving style. This meant Roche took his second victory with his Mk 1 car. Chris Powles completed the podium this time.
Roche now had another chance of claiming a hat-trick of visits to the top step of the podium but having led the opening lap, Allwood got ahead under braking for Rocket on the next circuit. Roche lost places from then on as his engine kept cutting out and he eventually coasted into the pit lane with a dead motor. Meanwhile, Allwood sped onwards to take the win from Powles and Harris and with it, the chance to also join Henderson in a prestigious seat on the plane to Barcelona for the European MX-5 Cup Final, as his results saw him lead the standings come the end of the weekend.
During the previous meeting at Snetterton there was no time to run the final Group B race and so this began proceedings in Wales. Richard Collins came out on top after a superb battle with Lewis Field and William Stephenson. The latter would have been frustrated to drop to sixth in the closing stages although he gained a place when 30 secs were added to Jack Brewer’s race time for failure to serve a drive through penalty for Track Limit infringements.
The pukka Group B Anglesey contests employed a promotion system into the next Group A event and so there was a different winner every time. These were Kevin Brent, Richard Breland and Joshua Jackson.
While it was a triple header weekend for the Mazda series, the Caterham categories had two races each.
Aaron Head set the fastest time in the qualifying session for the BookaTrack.com Caterham Superlight R300-S contenders but Lee Wiggins led every lap of race 1 with Head taking second from Jack Sales. Head and Wiggins were the leading protagonists once more in Sunday’s contest, these two constantly swapped places until Head hit the front and stayed there at Rocket on lap 4. With 18 minutes left on the clock, Stephen Nuttall got a good run through Church to take third from David Winstanley.
William Smith and Henry Heaton proved to be the men to beat as they finished first and second each time the competitors in the ITC Compliance Caterham Supersport Championship took to the track. Smith’s demon piece of late braking to leap-frog from third to first at Rocket on lap 1 of the second thrash was the move of the weekend! Andres Sinclair and Christian Szaruta each made one visit to the third step of the podium.
Daniel Bremner and Anthony Barnes had a titanic tussle in Saturday’s Avon Tyres Caterham Tracksport encounter. The former eventually made a pass at Rocket and then held on for the rest of the lap to establish a decisive advantage. They were the class of the field once more on Sunday and had a fantastic battle that just intensified as the 30 minute contest came to a close. Barnes lost his nose cone during the course of the fight but still came out on top to take the win from Bremner by 0.131 secs. Richard Lambert and then Steve McCulley were the men who came third in these two events.
Russ Olivant and Alan Cooper were the star players in the Avon Tyres Caterham Roadsport double header. Having finished first and second on Saturday they ran side by side for pretty much the whole of the first lap of race 2. Their fun soon came to a premature end when Olivant unexpectedly appeared in front of Cooper who couldn’t avoid hitting him. Cooper’s car began leaking coolant following the contact and retired to the pits – just as the stewards were about to call him in anyway. Olivant came home down in ninth leaving Rui Ferreira to take the win from Guy Hawkins and Daniel Quintero.
With the North Western Centre operating meetings at Oulton Park and Anglesey on the same weekend – both using the longest possible configuration of each track – the BRSCC would like to extend its thanks to the officials and marshals from this region for enabling all this racing to take place.
You can view the full results at ANGLESEY RESULTS
Dave Williams
