David Penlington made the most of a mid race restart to capture his first ever win, fending off Paul Walton by a scant 0.163 seconds at the flag. Paul takes up the story:

Race Report from Paul Walton

As we have only raced in the championship once this year, we were looking forward to meeting up with all our old friends at Donington. There was a good entry of 25 cars and fantastic weather. We were also given the luxury of pit garages, which gave us the opportunity to keep cool, something we rarely have to worry about.

Proceedings didn't begin until late morning (very civilized), giving us a chance to lie in and listen to the jets whizzing over our heads at 3-minute intervals from 6am onwards. Qualifying was reasonably uneventful with everyone achieving a grid position and no accidents that I am aware of. It was good to see David Penlington and Roger Newman on the front row with myself and Stephen Hare behind them. I was really pleased with my own position and suspect it owed a lot to Robin having changed the front dampers to the ones we had previously used on the Elden. Simon Davy took a very creditable 5th place considering he could barely walk after his recent accident.

THE RACE
Roger and myself both had a good start and by Redgate occupied the first 2 positions with Roger leading. Sadly at this first corner, Dave Lowe and Richard Shelton became entangled and this put them both out of the race. After a couple of laps Roger and myself had pulled out a lead that was sufficient for me to execute an incompetent 360 at the Old Hairpin and resume only losing one place to Dave Penlington. This allowed Roger to pull out a huge lead. Unfortunately someone (I think it was Ian Millward) came off at Craner Curves and as the organisers considered his car to be in a dangerous position we had to spend 3 or 4 laps under yellow and black flags. This of course gave us all the opportunity to catch up with Roger.

At the restart Dave managed to "old man" myself and Roger and claim the lead. He did this by keeping a couple of hundred yards between himself and Roger as we approached the chicane, letting Roger go through the chicane slowly allowing himself to get up to race speed in anticipation of the green flag. I didn't feel safe to follow him too closely as he had a tried a similar manoevre on the previous lap which resulted in me almost running up his arse when the anticipated green flag didn't appear and he was forced to brake. In the remaining couple of laps I managed to pass Roger and set off in pursuit of Dave. Sadly for me there was not enough of the race left to take the win and Dave achieved this by the small margin of 0.16 of a second. This was Dave's first race win and he has to be congratulated on driving a very good tactical race. Commiserations have to go to Roger who I am sure would have won the race without us having to spend such a large proportion of it under the yellow and black flag.

From my point of view it was a fantastic close race, the highlight of which was probably Steve Hare's late breaking for the Esses which resulted in him lighting up his tyres for about 30 yards, so confusing everyone with a blue smoke screen.

Paul Hubbard was elected the driver of the day for has Class A win, which he achieved without a clutch. Novice award went to Guy Snook and not unusually the BRSCC failed to supply trophies for 2nd and 3rd in Class A or the Novice Championship.

It was good to race with our old friends again and we look forward to seeing you all again at Cadwell.

Paul

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