NATIONAL HOT ROD REPORT
Murray’s magic Bank Holiday Monday at Foxhall
A massive Bank Holiday crowd enjoyed three National Hot Rod races with three different winners, but probably went home talking more about the number of crashes, yellow flags and penalties than any other aspect of the racing.
At the end of it all it was Gavin Murray who made off with the final honours, chased home by Stuart Mclaird and Mikey Godfrey.
The opening heat started as it meant to go on. Steve Dudman went off at the first turn and then was collected by Alistair Lowe, causing a very early yellow flag.
The restart had Terry Hunn out front but again it didn’t go far before another caution, this time brought on by Aaron Dew’s Ginetta ramming the barriers.
Hunn was still leading from Mclaird, Shaun Taylor and Layton Milsom for the next attempt, Milsom fell back as Lee Pepper, Danny Smith and Murray all got by. Murray had relegated Smith as well and Kym Weaver was just trying to do the same when the pair touched along the back straight, sparking off the biggest crash of the day. Smith spun into the path of the chasing pack, his car took an enormous impact from Dick Hillard, whose smashed Vauxhall Tigra careered on into the wall, taking Jason Kew, Carl Waller-barrett and Godfrey with him. The resulting yellow was no surprise although Weaver’s disqualification for causing it obviously came as one to the driver, who promptly put his car away for the day.
The rest of the race remained comparatively incident free. Murray chased down Mclaird and passing him five laps from home.
Heat two was a good deal less disjointed. Lowe was on pole but he got jumped by Billy Bonnar, the Scot scooting into the lead with Paul Frost following him past Lowe’s race-tape special a lap later. The race then became all about who was to finish after Bonnar and Frost. Lowe battled with Colin Hitch initially before Hitch was forced sideways at Turn 3 but repeated blue flagging of Lowe didn’t let anyone else past him although some argy-bargy exiting Turn 2 did in the end, with Chris Crane moving up to third but far too late to bother the leaders.
With Murray on the front row it always looked like the final might be a bit of a gift for him but those around him weren’t giving anything away, with Frost turning pole into an immediate lead and Mclaird filling Murray’s mirrors. Three laps in, Murray found a way down Frost’s inside exiting Turn 4, Mclaird followed him through and Frost then dissapeared from the leaderboard after a coming together with Pepper.
Mclaird stayed with the leader for many laps but Murray eventually inched away. By that point Godfrey was established in third with most of the interest centring on the battle involving Bonnar, Hunn, Colin Smith, Chris Haird and Kew. Bonnar was being slowed by a backfire but despite repeated blue flags and a nine-car queue behind him it was a long time before Hunn was eventually able to make an outside pass stick. Bonnar got swamped by the pack soon after that but this was only shortly before he went a lap down to the leader, who was all but home and dry with five laps to go.