WIN WIN WIN WIN FOR WINSTANLEY AT OULTON


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Despite his closest rivals' best efforts, no-one could topple Winstanley from the top spot in 420Rs – Photo: SnappyRacers

Danny Winstanley made it 4 Oulton Park wins in 4 Caterham races when the BRSCC’s North Western Centre took charge at the Cheshire circuit on 12th August.

At the corresponding meeting a year ago, Winstanley took a double victory and he followed that up with a brace in the 2 Avon Tyres Caterham Seven 420R Championship encounters on Saturday. He made the first of these look easy as he took the chequered flag 5 secs ahead of a marauding pack of approximately 10 cars – these were headed by Lee Wiggins and Jack Sales.

Winstanley had to work much harder for his second set of laurels. As Sales repeatedly tried to overtake around the outside, Winstanley had to take the slower defensive line which bunched everyone up behind him. It was a thrilling 30 minutes which saw him just about hold on in front as Wiggins demoted Sales in the closing stages to make the second podium a repeat of the first.

It was a similar story with the Avon Tyres Caterham Roadsports contenders with Pete Walters winning the first contest by no less than 23 secs as everyone else battled frantically amongst themselves with shredded bodywork getting scattered all over Old Hall at one point. Ben Gillias and John Shiveral completed the podium.

Walters was unable to break away after the field came under starter’s orders for a second time. He was the fourth car home in a multi-way scrap for victory in which the order was constantly changing. The first 3 home were Tom John, Jay McCormack and Paul Vernon.

Christian Szaruta set the fastest time in qualifying for the ITC Compliance Caterham Supersport drivers but then his day went downhill. Running fourth from the start of race 1, on lap 5 contact with Dan Gore at Island Bend saw him spin down the order. Gore had started from the back of the grid after dramas in qualifying and the incident with Szaruta resulted in him hitting the barriers hard – he was out for the rest of the day.

By the time Szaruta had worked his way back up to fourth, the gap to the 3 leaders – Timothy Dickens, Mike Evans and Henry Heaton – was too great for him to bridge although starting from that position later in the afternoon enabled him to take the lead during the course of the 30 minutes but he could not hold on to it. Matters came to a head when Szaruta spun at the final corner as Evans took the win from Heaton and Dickens.

The opening thrash for the ALACO Motorsport Logistics Caterham Seven 270R runners saw a super dice between Andrew Perry and Russ Olivant. Their squabbling saw Gary Smith and Daniel Quintero close in to make it 4 for the lead but then Quintero lost control at Denton’s and hit the barriers hard, almost rolling. After a brief Safety Car interlude, the action resumed until Olivant sustained some damage to his left rear. He dropped down to fifth as Perry, Smith and Rob Watts occupied the podium places.
There were more woes for Olivant as he failed to complete a lap in race 2 as Perry took another victory. Watts was third once again as Alex Jordan took the runner-up position.

The first event for the ITC Compliance Caterham Seven 310R contenders was cut short by a few minutes when the air ambulance came in to land to take Quintero to hospital – he wasn’t thought to be too seriously injured however. At the time, Lee Bristow was leading from Steve McCulley and Joe Draper.

As it concluded the day, there were fears that the second 310R race would also be reduced in duration because of the the curfew but fantastic work by the officials and marshals meant it actually got underway almost 30 minutes earlier than scheduled.

This saw a great battle for the lead with Bristow moving ahead at the start of the final lap but exiting the final corner McCulley out-dragged him to take the win by 0.035 secs. Chris Rankin completed the podium on this occasion.

You can view the full results at OULTON PARK RESULTS

Dave Williams


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