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.

W Series Hungary: Chadwick dominates to retake title lead

Jamie Chadwick took her second win of the W Series season, beating title rival Alice Powell by some margin to reclaim the lead of the championship standings.

Chadwick lost the title lead to Powell following the latter’s victory at Silverstone two weeks ago, but Chadwick struck back this weekend with pole position. She then got a much better launch off the line than Powell on race day to hold the lead into Turn 1.

Powell briefly had to go on the defensive to stay in second ahead of Nerea Marti, who got away quickly from third. Meanwhile, Marti’s Academy teammate Ira Sidorkova jumped forward from fifth position to challenge Beitske Visser, and claim fourth place at Turn 4 on the opening lap.

Further back in the pack, Chadwick’s Veloce teammate Bruna Tomaselli dropped back from sixth on the grid to ninth behind Marta Garcia, Emma Kimilainen and Belen Garcia. At Turn 1, Fabienne Wohlwend got caught up in the jostling for position and lost her front wing, forcing her into a pit stop at the end of lap 1, and retirement shortly after.

 

Over the opening few tours, Chadwick set a series of fastest laps in clean air to stretch clear of Powell. The gap was already over a second by the end of lap 2, and that continued to grow with each following lap. As Chadwick drove away, Powell and Marti also began opening up a gap on the rest of the field.

Chadwick continued to lead for the remainder of the race, and opened a gap of over seven seconds after consistently setting fastest lap times and lapping within a second of her pole time from Friday. She crossed the line to take the win at the end of lap 19 with Powell a distant second, and Marti further back in third and taking her first podium in the series.

Behind the top three, Sidorkova and Visser remained locked in a tight battle over fourth place. Sidorkova made an error at Turn 11 on lap 3 which allowed Visser to close to within half a second, although Sidorkova responded well in the following laps to keep ahead of the Forbes car.

 

Visser continued to put the pressure on the 18-year-old ahead and was consistently a tenth quicker per lap. But with the Hungaroring being such a difficult circuit to overtake on, Visser had to follow Sidorkova home over the line in fifth place.

Kimilainen took sixth place, having pounced on a late wide moment by Marta Garcia through Turn 11 to take the position on lap 16. Marta Garcia was seventh ahead of Belen Garcia, Tomaselli and Jess Hawkins.

Chadwick’s win puts her back at the top of the championship standings with 73 points, although Powell is just one point behind in second place. Marti’s podium moves her up into third in the standings on 37 points, with former third-place driver Sarah Moore one point behind her after finishing the Hungary race in 15th.

W Series returns after the summer break on 28th August at Spa-Francorchamps, in support of the Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix.

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