CADWELL PARK: MSVR
MAY 1
Richard Gittings will have left Cadwell Park satisfied, having extended his championship lead in the Monoposto M1000 class.
The Jedi driver successfully held off Jeremy Timms’ Dallara F399, trading fastest laps until Timms’ chain broke on the second to last lap. Meanwhile, Jeremy’s cousin and polesitter Jason Timms, fought back from eighth to second after a spin on the Mountain on the first lap.
Reliability problems struck again in race two for the Timms’. Jason lost drive coming off Mansfield, while Jeremy, having been jumped by four Jedis at the start, was forced to pit after being shown the orange and black flag, and slipped out of the top 10 but managed fastest lap in class. Ahead, having been briefly threatened by the fellow Jedi driver Jonathan Reed, Gittings pulled away to wrap up a dominant weekend.
A seized gearbox in qualifying was not enough to prevent Robbie Watts claiming his 60th victory in Monoposto as the Raw Power Motorsport driver pulled away from Ben Cater and championship leader Tony Bishop in the Monoposto F3 class. Watts’ victory was made all the more remarkable by the fact that he was nursing a sprained wrist, leaving him driving almost one-handed around Cadwell’s twisting asphalt corridor. Behind, Robin Dawe claimed a spectacular class victory in the 2000 Classic category even after spinning under the safety car, which required a charge from the back of the field. Finishing behind Dawe, Terry Clark successfully defended his class lead against strong opposition from Otway and Jordan in Mono 2000.
Watts repeated his race one feat with a slim victory in race two from Bishop and Cater after struggling through traffic on the last lap – which reduced his margin from five seconds to just under three-tenths. Dawe too, managed a double in a commanding drive ahead of more youthful Mono 2000 machinery led by Otway ahead of a distant Mark Drew.
A red flag forced a 20-minute delay and rolling restart of the MSVT Trackday Trophy when the Steve Hewson/matt Nossiter Porsche 924 spun into the barriers while accelerating through the field. At the restart Gary Burstow jumped the pack to take an easy victory from fellow soloist David Scarborough and the battling Alex Di Donato/ Benjamin Puncher and John Lyne, the former pair showing pace in their ex-rally Peugeot 205GTI performing superbly against more experienced opponents, the drives of the day.
From the moment the lights went out in both MSV Allcomers races it was clear Mark Jessop’s Ginetta G50 would be the victor. In the melee of the diverse field and among a confused start of race one, the Caterhams of Tony Bennett and Kevin Williams swamped the slow starting Luke Armiger (Vauxhall Tigra) into Coppice. After fending off Williams, Armiger half-spun but recovered to overtake Bennett into the same treacherous complex.
Jessop repeated his feat of lapping the field up to fourth place in race two. Armiger succeeded in holding off both Caterhams to keep Jessop honest until lap four when Jessop exploited the greater stability and traction of the Ginetta in damp conditions to power ahead.