Racing Results 2014
Rounds 3 & 4 Rockingham: 17/18th May 2014
- 2 Race wins for Mark Biggers
- Class wins for Peter Challis and Doug Ellwood
Qualifying:
After a 6 week gap, the Arrowpak Saloon and Sports Car Championship reconvened at the Rockingham International Speedway. With bright and dry weather, it was disappointing to see just cars from the Class A1 and A2 in attendance, although a few Fords from the Ford Racing series helped with numbers on the track.
Peter Challis (Porsche 997 GT3) took pole but only by 4/100ths from the Class A2 Nissan Skyline of Mark Biggers. Doug Ellwood (Marcos Mantis) was up next, 1.3 seconds off pole, with Chris Whiteley (Ginetta G50) and Mahesh Perera (Toyota Supra) making up the top 5.
Race 1:
Race 1 was Saturday afternoon, the cars came round for the rolling start, and Biggers launched into the banked first corner already pulling a gap on Challis. By the end of the lap, Biggers was already 2 seconds clear of second placed Challis, Ellwood was 3 seconds further back, Whitelely the same again. Perera was absent dueto issues from qualifying and would face a long trip back to Wales to repair the Toyota Supra for the Sunday race.
On lap 2 Biggers pulled another 2 seconds clear, and was already running at a pace over a second faster than the qualifying pole time. Ellwood was losing 3 seconds a lap to Challis, Whiteley struggling to stay in touch. Biggers carried on relentlessly pulling away at 2 seconds a lap, while Whiteley was ow able to match Ellwood's pace, albeit from 3 seconds behind him. By lap 5 the front three were strung out with 10 second gaps between Biggers and Challis, and Challis and Ellwood, with a 7 second gap back to Whiteley.
At 10 laps, the gaps were 17 seconds, 14 and 15 seconds separating the four front runners, now lapping some of the Fords out on track. Biggers went on to take his third win of the season by 20 seconds from Challis, who himself was 16 seconds clear of Ellwood, sufficient for the 5 second "track limits" penalty to have no effect. Whiteley finished 4th some way further back.
Race 2 - Sunday:
Another dry and bright day, but with a damp track. Perera had returned with the Toyota back in good health, but it was not a good weekend for him. A first lap incident saw Perera and Challis out of the race, and the safety car brought out for 2 laps while cars were moved. This time it was Ellwood's turn to take the challenge to Biggers. Biggers wasn't running at the same pace which was helping Ellwood stay in touch, 4 laps in and the gap was only 3 seconds. However Whiteley must have spun falling 40 seconds back before resuming at normal race speed.
Biggers was just doing enough at front to maintain a gap back to Ellwood, the latter started to gain slowly in the later part of the race. However, Ellwood ran out of laps as Biggers continued his 100 percent win run, this time by 7 seconds. Whiteley was having problems at the end of the race but still finished in third place.
Doug Ellwood (A1 Sports Cars) now leads the championship from Mark Biggers (A2 Saloon cars) 68-62 with Peter Challis on 58 points. Porsche still lead the MSE-Performance.com Manufacturers Cup but Marcos are now in second place, 34 adrift and 4 points ahead of Nissan.
Next time out is Oulton Park on 31 May.
With support from :
Mark Fish Motorsport, MSE-Performance.com & LMA Performance
Report by Trevor Nicosia, Car 10 (www.nyssaracing.com )
Click here to link to the full TSL Timing results pdf of the meeting