WRIGHT AND POLLEY MADE TO WORK HARD
Pre-season favourites Philip Wright and Ryan Polley in their Honda Civic Type Rs won the 750MC’s Hot Hatch rounds of 2022 at Croft but Kris McCloy came close to upsetting them both in his older Civic.
McCloy, enjoying more performance from a new KT24 Honda Accord engine, qualified on pole for race one and led until wrong-footed by a lapped car exiting the Jim Clark Esses in the closing laps.
Wright seized the opportunity to squeeze by into Barcroft and, by Sunny In, Polley was through as well, as McCloy kept going to finish behind them in third. With no first gear so needing to start in second, Wright was duly dropped by Polley and McCloy away from the grid in race two.
Wright was soon back with them however, and second became his when McCloy’s engine briefly cut out exiting the chicane and he tumbled to sixth.
Up front, Wright closed on
Polley but there was no way through as they finished noseto-tail at the line.
Christopher Nylan impressively took pole and won on his debut in the Type R Trophy but couldn’t repeat the feat in race two which started with a top-10 reversed grid.
That went the way of Travis Coyne until officials later excluded him for ‘driving in a matter incompatible with general safety’while leading as he entered a double-waved yellow flag zone.
Joe Jessup, second on the road, therefore inherited the win. Twice third on his racing debut was novice sensation Jake Hewlett.
On raw pace, Clio 197s looked favourites to win both Renault Clio Sport races but it was not to be. On his debut in the category, former karter Owain Rosser took pole in his 197 for race one but fell back with a lack of power.
Ultimately, the older 182s of
Scott Edgar and reigning champion Jack Dwane took the top two spots.
Rosser was fighting fellow 197 racer Justin Griffiths for the lead in race two when they retired after a tangle. Again the 182s moved in with local favourite Chris Keir taking his maiden win from Dwane, despite needing to remove parts of his dashboard which had fallen underneath his brake pedal.
Pip Hammond and Pete
Morgan were the winners of two hard fought Classic Stock Hatch races.
Graham Crowhurst and Mike Cutt took turns to beat each other in the two BMW Car Club Racing encounters, while an untouchable Richard Webb comfortably achieved a double victory in Sports 1000s.
Similarly Ben Short was unbeatable in the MX-5 tripleheader. Daniel Sibbons and Jonathan Lisseter triumphed in Ma7das.