Racing Results 2009
Round 13 Snetterton : 25th October 2009
Last gasp win for Tony Soper
Class wins for Richard Hawken, Mark Cripps, Ian Craig and David Pierce
The final round, race 13 of the 2009 LMA Euro Saloon and Sports Car Championship took place at Snetterton.
Qualifying:
A damp but drying track meant qualifying times were a little off expected race pace. Tony Soper in the Class A Harrier set the pole time almost a second clear of second placed (and Class B pole) Ilsa Cox in her Seat Leon. Peter Challis was 1/20th second behind Cox and would be hoping to extend his 100% win record for the season. Gary Furst (Mitsubishi Evo) and Richard Hawken (Nissan Primera) were also within 1/5th second of Cox on the grid. Kevin Wendt (BMW M3) was struggling and only managed 2 slow laps leaving Nick Hayes (Seat Leon) to narrowly fend off Mark Cripps (BMW M3) in the battle for Class C pole. Ian Craig's older BMW M3 took the Class D pole while David Pierce (Renault Clio) was well clear of fellow Clio drivers Jason Tarling and Stewart Calder in taking the Class E pole.
Race:
With the weather having remained bright, the track was now dry. Tony Soper got a bad start from pole and by the end of the first lap had fallen back to 7th place, and would indeed lose another place the following lap while waiting for the Harrier to properly warm up. Peter Challis had come through from 3rd on the grid to lead after one lap, his regular combatant throughout the season, Andy Harvey (Subaru Impreza), had blasted through to 2nd from 6th on the grid. Richard Hawken was a couple of seconds further back, closely followed by Ilsa Cox and Dave Cockell (Ford Escort Cosworth). Cockell passed Cox for 4th place on lap 3 and moved passed Hawken into 3rd the following lap. At the front, Harvey was tracking Challis just a second behind while further back, Soper was now on the move.
Harvey was gaining on Challis on lap 5 and brought the gap down to 0.6 second before Challis pulled off the track and out of the race. Harvey was now leading by three seconds from Cockell with Simon Deaton (Mitsubishi Evo) and Soper a further 6 seconds back in 3rd and 4th. Already (lap 6) Harvey was lapping the back markers which allowed Cockell to close up to within 1 second by lap 8. Soper moved up into 3rd place on lap 9 but was still 6 seconds adrift of Harvey. Soper set a new outright LMA lap record on lap 11 gaining three seconds on that lap alone, now Harvey led Cockell by a second with Soper just a second further back. Soper passed Cockell for 2nd on lap 13 and the gap was down to 0.7 seconds, on lap 14 it was 0.6 and on lap 15 just 0.35 with Cockell just 0.5 seconds further back. It was all down to the last lap, surely the extra power of the Subaru engine would be enough for Harvey to take the win? Coming out of Russell on the final lap, Soper got better exit speed. In the race for the line, both Harvey and Soper lapped Stewart Calder's Renault Clio and they were three abreast going for the line. Soper eclipsed Harvey by just 0.025 seconds, about 6 inches and took the race win by the narrowest ever LMA margin.
With the demise of Class B front runner Challis, Richard Hawken and Ilsa Cox were left to fight for the Class B win, Hawken eventually triumphing by just one second although he was never headed by Cox. Kevin Wendt was unable to take part in the race leaving Nick Hayes to earn enough points to seal his Class C Championship win, but Hayes could get nowhere near Class C race winner Mark Cripps. Ian Craig drove a steady race a little behind Cripps to take the Class D win while David Pierce took his second consecutive Class E win by 10 seconds from Jason Tarling.
All class champions except for Class C had already been decided prior to this race, Nick Hayes taking the title by virtue of still having his joker (double points) to play. As expected, Renault have won the MSE-Performance.com cup for manufacturers with a huge margin of 938 points to 514 from Ford with Seat back in 3rd place on 476.
Race Result:
Winner: 1st Tony Soper (Harrier LR9), 2nd Andy Harvey (Subaru Impreza), 3rd Dave Cockell (Ford Escort Cosworth), 4th Doug Ellwood (Marcos Mantis), 5th Gary Furst (Mitsubishi Evo), 6th Richard Hawken (Nissan Primera)
Class Winners: Class A Soper, Class B Hawken, Class C Mark Cripps (BMW M3), Class D Ian Craig (BMW M3), Class E David Pierce (Renault Clio)
Fastest lap: Tony Soper (Harrier LR9) 1:12.574 (96.82mph) – new lap record
With support from :
Mark Fish Motorsport, MSE-Performance.com & LMA Perfomance
Report by Trevor Nicosia, Car 10 ( www.nyssaracing.com )
Click here to link to the full TSL Timing results pdf of the meeting