BRCA Clubman’s Championship Rd6 – Report
Last weekend saw the BRCA Clubman’s Championship headed to the Midlands for Round 6 at Stafford RCMCC. Not the biggest of tracks on the Racing calendar but a real favourite of the Clubman’s racers as it’s quite challenging and when you get it right you are greatly rewarded. There was a near full entry for race day and there were also 60 plus drivers practicing on Saturday, this shows that this series is so popular as we only had two rounds of the championship remaining. For practice day we had seven timed runs for all classes in heat order, so plenty of opportunity to adjust to track conditions. The usual three classes were running, 17.5 Blinky, 13.5 Open and Formula One.
Sunday race day and four round by round qualifying runs was the order of the day after controlled practice in heat order. The track had been swept and prepped with a mix of sugar water for both days so the grip was there straight away for every competitor. Qualifying was run through and we had cool temperatures to start with in the morning and sun all day so perfect conditions. After the 10 finals were sorted we went straight into the two Leg Finals.
Ollie Payne was on pole for the highly competitive 13.5 Open A-final. He could wrap up championship if he won the two finals and after taking TQ in the first two rounds of qualifying he was on course to do just that. Liam Brooks was P2 after having a 2nd and 1st in round and Ben Moorey lined up P3 having two 2nd places. So we’re we’re all set for some very close racing in the finals.
Leg 1 had a mixture of ups and downs for a lot of the drivers but Ollie never looked back and took the win in style also getting the extra lap in to stamp his authority on the leg 1 win. Aaron Rose had a stormer of a race to take second from P6 on the grid making the most of the traffic but had an amazing race with Liam Brooks who recovered to third after some mid race incidents with back markers and the pair crossed the line almost side by side.
Leg 2 Ollie, Liam and Ben Moorey lead the field away from their respective grid positions and kept station for pretty much all of the race with the rest of the top half following in a train behind. We saw immense pressure put on Ollie by Liam for the whole race, Ollie have to defend at every turn against the very fast chasing Liam with Ben always there waiting for the two to make a mistake. At the end Ollie and Liam pulled out a slight lead on Ben with a last dash to the line with them being separated by 1/10 of a second and Ben took a fine third place 3 seconds after.
A great final to watch which saw Ollie wrap up the 13.5 Open Championship to become the 2018 BRCA Champion.
Overall positions after the 2 Leg Finals:
1. Ollie Payne (Destiny)
2. Liam Brooks (Xray)
3. Aaron Rose (Schumacher)
In the 17.5 Blinky class Dominic Carter was trying this very competitive and biggest class of the Clubman’s for the first time. He was the fastest driver all weekend and it would be a brave person to bet against him. He took the P1 position with 3 TQ runs. Darren Tickner with a 1st and 3rd in round sat on P2 with Dani Young on P3 joint on points with Darren and having her best ever Clubman’s qualifying session.
Leg 1 Dominic lead the field away with a very close fast chasing pack behind him. Dani was the only driver who saved a new set of tyres for her final and had a great battle with Darren, but a coming together saw Dani have to wait and Gareth got through to 2nd which Dani retook meanwhile Dominic had checked out and crossed the line to take the win, Dani came home 2nd with Gareth a few car lengths behind in 3rd.
Leg 2 saw Dominic and Darren both have clean starts and pull away from the pack while the rest of the field constantly swapped places. Chris Parrot meanwhile made the most of this and moved up into 3rd place. Dani made the best of a bad start and followed Chris for the remainder of the race putting pressure on him every lap but Chris took 3rd with Darren taking 2nd a few seconds behind the winner Dominic.
Overall positions after the 2 Leg Finals:
1. Dominic Carter (Awesomatix)
2. Darren Tickner (Xray)
3. Dani Young (ARC)
The Formula One pole position was secured with Luke Lee taking 3 TQ runs in the first three rounds of qualifying so he sat out of round four to save his tyres for the final. P2 went to Stephen Lander taking TQ in round four to add to his two 2nd places. P3 was James Wright to round out the top three.
Leg 1 and a great start from pole sitter Luke Lee but an unfortunate incident on lap 7 saw him hand the lead to Stephen who was waiting for an opportunity as was James Wright who took up second place and followed Stephen for the rest of the race with James Greener always in touch. This was the order they finished in with a well deserved win for Stephen who’s car looked really hooked up.
Leg 2 saw the pole sitter retire before the start. This gave everyone an opportunity to steel some valuable points, but with a change of track conditions as the track cooled the times showed the cars being slower, so a well balanced setup was required and it was Stephen had this and he edged out nearly a quarter of a lap lead over James Wright and the hard charging Andy Murray from P5 on the grid. This was the order they finished in and another well deserved win for Stephen.
Overall positions after the 2 Leg Finals:
1. Stephen Lander (Capricorn)
2. James Wright (Capricorn)
3. Andy Murray (Xray)
The final Round of the Clubman’s Championship will be held at the Cotswold Model Car Club on the 23rd of September. This is the biggest track on the Clubman’s race calendar so will test everyone to their limits.
Source: BRCA [brca.org]
