Winyard & Williams win at RC Racing Europe GP
This past weekend the RC Racing Europe GP took place at the Sheffield RC Racing club in England. The event attracted a strong field of Touring and GT12 racers to the Yorkshire based track. The race featured a new larger track, control tyres and full scrutineering checks. The race format also included some seeding round to make sure everything was fair for all racers. After seeding it was Chris Lovely who was leading the way the Touring Blinky, closely followed by team mate Nathan Winyard and local racer Rickey Lee. GT12 also looked close between David Underwood, Chris Parrot and Gareth Williams. Underwood managed to take the seeding honours on the final round. The Tamiya support class was producing great entertainment from with the off with John Yarnall showing the fastest pace.
The tight qualifying rounds really tested the drivers and how they approached the rounds. Both top seeds in GT12 and TC hit problems in the first round meaning they would have to be very careful in the remaining ones. Lee took full advantage of this taking the win in the first round and second in the next one. Winyard also benefited and managed to take the second round win. The pair went flat out in the final round to decide the TQ with Lee just managing to take the win. In GT12 Williams had the points control but Underwood appeared to be the faster racer. The pair started the final round with wins but Underwood suffered more problems allowing Williams to take the top spot. The Tamiya Truck heat saw clean sweep for Yarnall, he would start ahead of Steve Baines.
The two leg finals added more pressure to what had already been a tough meeting for a lot of racers. In the premier class Lovely was on a mission and even after a bad start he progressively charged his way into the lead to finish a lap up on everyone else. The deciding leg was to be the most entertaining though. Lee suffered a bad start on this occasion droping down into third. The top three racers pressed on in a league of their own and found new limits on the track. With the increased pace it was case of our would fall first. Lovely made the smallest of mistakes to drop him back from the trio and leave it to finish as a two horse race. Lee pushed Winyard onto the final lap but there was just no way of finding anything else to get past. With a win and second place Nathan Winyard took the overall win.
Touring Blinky top 5 results:
1. Nathan Winyard – Xray
2. Chris Lovely – Xray
3. Rickey Lee – Awesomatix
4. Mikey Mansell – Capricorn
5. Joseph Cocking – Yokomo
In GT12 there were race long battles between Williams and Underwood. Williams kept a cool head in the first final to hold back Underwood and take the advantage to the final leg. The second leg featured a much closer battle with the pair convoying through the field. In the second half of the race though Underwood managed to find a bit more pace to pull off one of the best passes of the event. He took the leg two win but it wasn’t enough to take the overall victory.
GT12 top 5 results:
1. Gareth Williams – Zen Racing
2. David Underwood – Zen Racing
3. Chris Parrott – Zen Racing
4. Tom Foreman – Schumacher
5. Rob Scott – Zen Racing
Tamiya Racing Trucks also provided a great battle, Baines managed to finally topple Yarnall from the top spot with a very clean drive in leg one. For leg two however Yarnall was back in focus and untouchable. He took the second leg and overall victory.
Tamiya Racing Trucks top 5 results:
1. John Yarnall
2. Steve Baines
3. Michael Royston
4. Shaun Leatherbarrow
5. George Royston
Source: RC Racing Europe [rcracingeurope.co.uk]
www.rcracingeurope.co.uk
