The first race weekend of the new season goes off with a shortened grid, but nevertheless a fully action packed set of races.
Qualification was a close session with the top 10 being within 1 second of each other.
This transferred into some tight couple of laps after the red lights dropped. Oscar Pink caught pole and stayed in front from the first corner right until the finish line. Some great driving down the grid with the FWD cars getting faster on the first part of the race while the RWD need a couple more laps to get heat into the tires. This showed itself by seeing Peter Harvey passing Giovanni Gentles at the start of the race only to give the position back at the end.
The position graph for race 1 show that while there was position swaps during the race, the reality would show that there was really tight fighting for these positions. Most of the race had neck and neck battling for position with both great defending and some bold moves for passing.
Race 2
Race 2 has a grid set as it finished for Race 1 and just as in Race 1 Oscar Pink stayed in front for the duration of the session. Closely followed by Giovanni Gentles 1,5 seconds behind. Peter Harvey had a rub-in with Giovanni already on the first lap after a tight fight going down Craner Curves coming into Old Hairpin that resulted in a bent suspension and though crawl from 3 position down to last and back to 8th place finish.
Karl Lykkegaard managed to really push his BMW in race 2. Coming in at 10th place in race 1 he would go out with less weight than the rest in front and after getting some heat into his tires he really pulled pace. Finishing in a strong 3rd in the end.
Unfortunately it was a short race for Fin Tagg after a hectic first 5 laps he would end his race on that lap. The graph here shows a rather busy couple of laps until lap 6.
Race 3
Race 3 saw again added weight for the top 10 finishers and a complete reversed grid from race 2. This would stop Oscars winning streak, but still with a full set of weights and starting at the back he would climb to a 6th place finish.
Peter Harvey would lead the race for the majority of laps, but having a bit more weight towards Fin Tagg empty ballast tank, he would loose out on the top spot when there was only 2 laps left.
Cato Larsen would climb from 8th to 4th on lap 3, closely followed by Karl. These two would go on to have close battles and swap place for the most of the race where Cato, by the aid of a hard battle into Old Hairpin where he and Aaron Hamstead got close and acquainted resulting in and unfortunate spin out for Aaron. Very unfortunate for Aaron as he had a great race until then.
The end of the race shows that Drew White was able this time to get ahead of his team mate in MMI racing then finishing 5th on the grid.
It is safe to say that it will be a blast to follow this season when it next travels to Brands Hatch on the Indy layout. A short, fast and busy track layout that will require full concentration on every lap on all 3 races.
Until next time.
All results and graphs can be found in our championship viewer. You can click on this at the top menu.