SCORCHING ZOLDER!

Aaron Head cools off with a champagne shower after his second R300 win at Zolder. Photo: www.snappyracers.com

We enjoyed a very busy but successful ‘EuroFest’ meeting at the excellent Zolder circuit over the weekend, and the weather was certainly kind to us with high temperatures and just a brief shower yesterday morning.

Caterham Roadsport contender William Smith was the first driver onto the top step of the podium on Saturday afternoon, having held off challenges from Chris Hutchinson and Jack Sales. The top three were some way ahead of the rest of the field with the best of rest being Henry Heaton. Extra credit therefore to Heaton for coming out on top in Sunday’s encounter. In a much tighter race the Yorkshireman took full points ahead of Sales and William Smith.

The podium ‘love’ was spread around in the two Caterham Tracksport races with five different drivers featuring. Stephen Nuttall won the first tour from Andres Sinclair and Pete Fortune. In a reversal of Fortune, Pete became the only man to visit the podium twice but this time on the top step, winning Sunday’s race from Newmarket’s Michael Coulten and Nick Portlock. Only 0.706 seconds separated the first four with Nuttall coming home in fourth.

Gerry Taylor made a very impressive return to the Toyo Tires Porsche Championship winning two of the three races. Ed Hayes and Richard Avery made up the podium on Saturday and Avery moved up a step in the final race, swapping positions with Ed Hayes. In between, Avery had a race win himself ahead of Garry Lawrence with Nick Hull an impressive third. Class B of the Porsche Championship was dominated by Leighton Buzzard’s Jayson Flegg who took a hat-trick of class wins. By way of contrast, Class C for the 924 was a very open affair with Philip Waters, Simon Hawksley and Alastair Kirkham sharing the class spoils.

Aaron Head came out on top in two titanic BookaTrack.com Caterham R300 Superlight Championship battles. In the first encounter the Colchester driver beat Danny Winstanley to the line by just 0.254 seconds with another Essex driver, Lee Wiggins, taking third. In the second race David Robinson closed the margin of victory to and incredible 0.063 seconds! Danny Winstanley had to satisfy himself with the points accrued for a third place finish.

Peter Drennan was the comfortable winner of the first Irish Global GT race with Paul Fitzpatrick a distant second and Derek Behan third. Drennan was again the victor in round two but this time Alan Byrne was much closer, reducing the seventeen second deficit to just 0.120 seconds with Mark Braden in P3. That was just a taste of things to come as in the final race Byrne took the chequered flag in a tight battle with Braden, with Drennan relegated to a close third.

Caterham Supersport leader Jon Mortimer will have been pleased to have left Zolder with an increased points lead but he had to settle for two second place finishes with Denham’s James Robinson getting the better of him in each of the two races, which were very tight affairs. The third place spoils were shared by Kiwi Danny Killeen and Matt Dyer.

The two Mighty Minis races produced the same winners in each class in each race but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Supers champion Jamie White won a very close battle with Elliot Stafford and Scott Kendall in the first race. White had a more comfortable win in round two where Kendall and Stafford swapped places. Charlie Budd was the victor in the Standard Class in two incredible races that saw the top three covered by just over a second in the first outing, with Ludlow’s Samuel Hathaway a close second and Paul Inch third. Yesterday afternoon’s race was even tighter with Budd winning by 0.279 seconds from Ian Slark with Damien Harrington just another 0.256 seconds adrift in third.

We would like to thank everyone at Circuit Zolder for their help in making the weekend such a success, and particularly the marshals who were brilliant throughout.

All the results can be viewed at ZOLDER EUROFEST