| Brands Hatch Race Report: Champion of Brands
Practice Friday Practice was tricky to say the least as I had an engine failure in my car which forced us to swap to the teams spare car. Luckily however this didn’t slow us down and thanks to some speedy work over the lunch break by the team I didn’t miss any track time either. Qualifying – P3 Qualifying was over before it really started, I managed to do 4 flying laps before the gear link failed leaving me stuck in 4th gear. This meant I had to park in pit lane for the remainder of the session and missed out on any opportunity to improve my time. Luckily however my times in the early part of the session meant I still lined up P3 on the grid only 0.05 off of Pole position. Race 1 – P1 My start was almost perfect as I made a pass on Luke Cooper into turn 1 to climb to 2nd place. I spent the next few laps sitting in behind the race leader as we pulled away from the chasing pack, this allowed me to focus on attacking instead of also checking my mirrors. I made my move into turn 1 forcing Jordan Dempsey, the race leader, to go defensive before cutting to the inside going down Paddock and completing the move on the brakes into Druids. The remainder off the race was all about consistency as I slowly pulled away from the cars behind, unfortunately catching back markers allowed everyone to close the gap in the closing laps but never close enough to force me to go defensive. I crossed the line around half a second ahead of the cars behind to claim my first ever win at Brands Hatch! Massive thanks to everyone at Cliff Dempsey Racing for their hard work all weekend! Delighted I could bring home a win for them. |