Mark Green wins BRCA 1/8th Rd7

Round 7 was again back to the Halifax track in Yorkshire after a 5 week break to allow for the World Championship in Lostallo. The weather forecast for Saturday was for dry conditions but like always the UK forecast was wrong and the majority of the day was a wash out which allowed time to discuss what had happened at the Worlds with our racing colleagues. The Forecast for Sunday was for rain showers but this proved again to be wrong and a good days racing was the result.

The majority of the racers who had arrived in the hope for some practice on Saturday, decided to call it a day but at around 4pm, the track started to dry quickly and by 5pm a good dry line was formed and about a good meaningful hour to check your car and engine setups was available. Mark Green was again the man to beat after his Top 4 qualification result at the Worlds. He decided however to firstly check if he can complete 5 minutes without a fuel stop and then fine tweak the already good Serpent Chassis setup he has pioneered over the season. With the remaining Championship contenders all back home, this allowed for a small advantage to be gained for all the other competitors. A 10 minute controlled practice session was provided on Sunday morning to check your car and see if any overnight changes made any major performance improvements.

In Round 1, Mark Green was again in awesome form but made a mistake to allow his team mate Tim Wood to snatch Pole with Andy North a close second. Round 2 was the rocket round and Green delivered with a 21 lap run to put him on Pole by 8 seconds. The battle however was on for second place between Wood, North and Hicklin with only a second on the tarmac separating these cars. The times improved but due to errors by Richard Hicklin towards the end of his remaining qualifying runs prevented him Challenging North and Wood. Peter Hastings was in a comfortable 5th position ahead of Adam Catchpole with his new Serpent 966 chassis and Mega engine combination. Chris Heath however failed to make the top 10. He had a quick car but bad luck with stripped belts and running out of fuel prevented this.

The top 10 in qualifying were as follows:
1. Mark Green – Serpent/Novarossi – 21 laps 311
2. Tim Wood – Serpent/Mega – 20 laps 302
3. Andy North – Migen/Sirio – 20 laps 303
4. Richard Hicklin – Serpent/Mega – 20 laps 309
5. Pete Hastings – Serpent/IDM – 20 laps 311
6. Adam Catchpole – Serpent/Mega – 20 laps 313
7. Andrew Hastings – Serpent/Mega – 20 laps 313
8. Daniel Bancroft – Motonica/Max – 2o laps 314
9. John Carr – Serpent/Mega – 20 laps 314
10.Jason Frost – Mugen/Mega – 19 laps 295

The final started with no incidents with Mark Green breaking away from the pack and hiding upfront for the full race duration. The battle however was for second position. A tangle between Hicklin / Wood promoted North into second but he could not find the pace to pull away from a recovered Hicklin and Hastings. Onto the fast back straight at was apparent that North would have to allow them to overtake since understeer was a big problem requiring the car to be slowed down to allow the conventional driving line to be taken caused by too harder tires. At this point a mistake on the straight put North to the back of the field and a recovery drive was then required at his own pace to gain any good championship points. Daniel Bancroft was on a charge and at the 10 min point was in 3rd place and on for a potential podium finish, when a front drive shaft came out which dropped him down the order. With a combination of transponder failures and engine blow ups to Hastings and Catchpole respectively put them also out of the final equation. The final result was as follows:

A final Result:
1. Mark Green – Serpent/Novarossi – 118 laps
2. Richard Hicklin – Serpent/Mega – 115 laps
3. Tim Wood – Serpent/Mega – 114 laps
4. Andy North – Migen/Sirio – 113 laps
5. Andrew Hastings – Serpent/Mega – 111 laps
6. John Carr – Serpent/Mega – 110 laps
7. Daniel Bancroft – Motonica/Max – 108 laps
8. Jason Frost – Mugen/Mega – 108 laps
9. Pete Hastings – Serpent/IDM – 85 laps
10.Adam Catchpole – Serpent/Mega – 2 laps

The B final was a very close race and after a mechanical failure by Chris Heath while in the lead, promoted Rob Colman into first place followed by team mate Richard Waters and Georgio Aconfora who was putting his knowledge gained from the Worlds to good use.

B final Result:
1. Rob Colman – Mugen/Novarossi – 73 laps
2. Richard Waters – Mugen/Sirio – 71 laps
3. Georgio Aconfora – Mugen/Sirio – 69 laps

The full results and further images can be found at www.brca.org

The penultimate round is at the Mendip raceway in Western Super Mare in 3 weeks, with the championship still up for grabs.

Thanks to Andy North for the report.