THE FUN CUP CENTURIANS


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After 4 hours Team Eco won by less than half a second! Photo: Funcup UK

The BRSCC’s North Western Centre brought a close to the 2010 car racing season at Oulton Park with a meeting which featured an action packed FunCup race. This main event was supported by double headers for contestants in the Dunlop TVR and BRS Recovery XR Challenges.

The VW Beetle clones in the FunCup fought it out for 4 hours, this was enough time for the front runners to complete more than a century of laps – 104 to be exact. It was Team Elipse that made the early running but after half an hour their pace slowed and they quickly dropped to 4th. However they would return to the front later on.

At 60 minutes JPR/Indigo Racing were leading from Team Honeywell and Team Ram. Before long the Rams were up to second and pressuring JPR/Indigo but then they clipped the tyres that delimit Hislops Chicane and the lengthy repairs required to fix the resulting damage put them well out of contention. Soon afterwards Honeywell were also attending to their vehicle in the pits after clutch failure.

With their main rivals delayed it looked set fair for JPR/Indigo but, having led for almost half of the duration, they crashed out at Old Hall when negotiating lapped traffic. From this point the race became a battle between the two Solution Racing cars of Team Eco and Team New Level with Team Elipse twice returning to the front of the field only to receive stop and go penalties for pit-lane and Safety Car infringements.

With a few minutes remaining the New Level car got ahead with a late braking manoeuvre at Hislops but Team Eco was back ahead by the time they reached the start/finish straight and that was the way it stayed with less than half a second separating the pair when the chequered flag fell.

There was an unusually high rate of attrition amongst the diesel runners which meant the highest petrol engined finisher was Car No 107 of Team JPR in fifth place. They took class honours from Team Sherardiza UK Motorsport with a pass in the closing stages.

With the grid drawn at random a team comprising of Barristers who were competing in their first ever motor-race sat on pole position. They entered as part of one their number’s 40th birthday celebrations. Under the guidance of one of the legendary Hewitt brothers of MG fame, they drove steadily and kept out of trouble to bring the car home in 12th.

Earlier in the day, David Chant had been crowned the champion of the 2010 Dunlop TVR Challenge after he had taken two Class C victories in his Tasmin. Overall the rapid Class A Cerbera of Michael Saunders came home first in both outings although the Class B Tuscan of Stephen Guglielmi had led the opening lap of the second encounter.

Fiesta XR2 driver Paul Bishop had already tied up this year’s BRS Recovery XR Challenge but he took yet another victory the first time these hatchbacks took to the track having overcome the dicing duo of Simon Sheridon and Steve Poole. The XR season ended in fine style with the second race seeing the three leading cars of Poole, Craig Readyhough and Bishop covered by 0.249 secs at the line. Readyhough had crashed out of the lead of race 1 on the exit of Old Hall. Danny Leigh won the Escort XR3 class in both races.

The full results can be found here Click Here

Dave Williams


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