NO HOLDING BACK WALL IN TIGHT LOCOST CONTESTS
Louis Wall and Thomas Gadd shared the honours in the Locost championship at Oulton Park.
Karl Ruijsenaars took his first pole in the series but it was second-on-thegrid Wall who initially led off the line and became embroiled in a tight three-way fight for the win with Murray Shepherd and Gadd. Wall came through to take victory in the final moments of the last lap, a mere eight hundredths of a second ahead of Gadd.
Gadd was to find success in the second race, however, despite the best attempts of Wall and Mark Burton. Burton had dropped down from his starting position of third at the beginning of the race but quickly made his way back up the field, sweeping from fourth to second in one lap. It was another tense charge to the chequered flag as Burton made a final dive around the outside and both Burton and Wall crossed the line 0.21s behind Gadd in a near dead-heat. The entire top six finished within a second of the winner.
Joe Stables was crowned 2019 Class B and overall Bikesports champion despite starting close to the back of the grid after a troubled qualifying for his Radical SR3. He fought his way up to fifth in both races and wrapped up the championship with one round still to go. The first Bikesports race opened with contact between Charles Hall and Josh Smith and, with the championship leaders taking a trip into the gravel at Cascades, it became a battle between Joe Lock (Radical PR6) and Scott Mittell for the win. Mittell took the honours after making a move around Old Hall and continued his streak of strong results by finishing second to Josh Smith in the race later in the day.
Carl Swift and Robert Baker won the Club Enduro race in their SEAT Leon Eurocup by a margin of 4s from Rory Hinde and Owen Fitzgerald, taking the lead early on in the twohour race after the retirements of polesitter Leon Bidgway (Lotus Exige) and the BMW M4 of Luke Sedzikowski and David Whitmore. Class B victory went to the Honda NSX of Christopher Nylan and
Simon Wallis, while Class C honours looked to go to John Munro and Nick Dougill until their Mazda MX-5 pulled into the garage a few laps from the finish, leaving Andrew Lightstead and Imran Khan to take the win.
In the first BMW Car Club Racing Championship race, Michael Cutt took victory from pole while behind Rick Kerry fought off a last-lap attack from Michael Pensavalle through Cascades and Lakeside for second. In the second race of the day, Pensavalle was more successful, beating the E46 M3 of Jasver Sapra for the win, while Kerry and Cutt finished with only 0.3s between them for third.
It was two from two for Andy Hiley in the Sport Specials championship, with the entire podium replicating itself for the second race. In the opening encounter it was the battle for second that was closest as Paul Boyd (Eclipse SM1) made his way up from ninth to take the position from Martin Gambling on the final lap. It was even closer in the second race, with both Boyd and Gambling crossing the line 1.71s behind Hiley.