Classic Sports Car Club Winter Warm Up – Race 3 (Part 2)

The Cassar crusade continued unabated after the pitstops were concluded, the three-way resumed between Phiroze Bilimoria, Russell Hird and Adam Brown, who were all passed during the pitstops by James Slater in his Honda Civic by about eight seconds. Biliomoria was given a 30 second penalty for an unsafe release during his pitstop, which then put Peugeot specialist Carl Chambers into the contention for class win, however his bright yellow 208 GTI was to visit the pits another couple of times with a suspicious engine noise. The crew couldn’t see anything out of place in the pit lane, but Chambers didn’t risk pushing the car too far, and decided to retire.

Tom Oatley in his turbo Renault Clio was battling with Andrew Marson, one of the three Marson Fiat Abarths in the race, and the former Smart car races Simon Horrobin & James Palmer shared Ford Fiesta ST180. Husband and wife pairing of Toby Harris & Lisa Selby were next to fall, as their Ford Fiesta turbo was struggling in with low oil pressure, so Toby took the wise decision and cut his stint short to save the engine from detonating.

Battles and potential battles were difficult to read due to numerous groups of cars not all being on the same lap, but a group that were similar in pace in the closing stages of the race was James Joannus Renault Clio turbo, Richard Marsons Abarth, Adrian Matthews in his new and unusual toy, a Volvo C30, and long time Peugeot racer James Wilson. Another duel that formed in the closing stages was the newly recoloured BMW Mini R56 of John Wyatt, and CSCC newcomer Mark Carey in his Honda Integra Type R. Whilst they may not have been battling for class position, as Mark is in Tin Tops, whereas John is in Turbo Tin Tops, this doesn’t affect how close their fight was and hard hard they would make it for each other.

The flag fell after 17 laps, Danny Cassar would claim the win by over a minute from the Turbo Tin-Tops victor Phiroze Bilimoreia, who was chased home by Russell Hird. Sadly for Slater, he was hit with a post-race penalty which denied him 2nd place. Only seven cars were on the lead lap, such was the colossal performance of Cassar. Winner of the Puma Cup, sadly away from the limelight somewhat with so many cars and battles on track, was the Alain Menu Super Touring Mondeo coloured car of Luke Johnson, finishing in 28th place overall, just shy of 50 seconds ahead of the next Puma of Jon Glover.

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