Champions Decided in 2011 Schumacher BTCC Champs

Last weekend saw the close of the 2011 Schumacher BTCC Summer Championship at the fantastically fast Mendip circuit. The five round series that has been massively successful this year, has seen entries of between 130 to 150 drivers at each event, running on the Sorex 32RY control tyre. Going into the final meeting of the year there was still plenty to play for in terms of overall championship positions.
Olly Jefferies and Andy Moore could both take the win in the Modified class with good results. Zak Smith, Ryan Edwards and James Hart were all in with a shout in Pro Stock and Rob West and Zack Finlay would battle in out in 13.5T. With bad weather again present, it was decided by a majority vote of the drivers to run round by round qualifying, due to the changing nature of the track. This meant that two good runs out of three qualifiers would be needed to gain a top position.

Modified
Qualifying was dominated by the Mi4CX of Chris Grainger, taking two out of the three rounds with a time six seconds faster than his rivals in the last round. Although Chris has been competitive in all the races this year, he wasn-t in the hunt for the title. Andy Moore lined up behind Chris with Elliott Harper third and Olly Jefferies fourth on the grid going into the finals.  
The first final saw a dominant win for Chris after a troubled start for the others, as Andy Moore recovered to take second with Elliott third. A disaster of a run for Olly saw him DNF and could have really hampered his championship. Unfortunately the UK weather had come over by the time the second final was running so a change of cars and tyres for the guys was the order of the day. The disaster struck for Chris on the line as his car did not get off the grid and got hit, ending his race. Olly Jefferies and Alan Bickerstaff came through in the wet conditions to take the top two places with Phil Chambers third with Andy Moore crucially in fourth. So almost unheard off at this level, Andy won the meeting with a second and a fourth and more importantly that 100 points for the overall win.  This meant that Andy added the Schumacher BTCC Championship to his BRCA Championship for 2011 by just a single point from Olly Jefferies with Jonny Aird in third. Andy is now added to a host of great names on the Cecil Schumacher Trophy.

Pro Stock
Two of the three title contenders lined up in first and third with Ryan Edwards taking TQ and rival Zak Smith third. Unfortunately for James Hart he just didn’t find the magic this weekend and was in the B final. The first leg saw a great battle between the two title contenders Ryan and Zak and in this one Zak came out on top with Ryan second with BRCA Champ Ayrton Anderson in third. Just like the Mod final, the rain had started to fall in the second leg and tyre choice was tricky between wet and dry. Alex Gardiner got the choice correct and romped through the field putting in some excellent overtakes from tenth on the grid to take the win from an assured drive from Ryan. Zack crucially finished fourth, but this wasn’t enough leaving Ryan to take the overall win and the Robin Schumacher Trophy by the slimmest of margins.

Stock
Once again the two title contenders Rob West with his Mi4CX and Zack Finlay battled it out in qualifying in the 13.5T class, with Zack taking TQ by just a point from Rob. Trouble struck for Zack in the first final which left Rob an open track to take an easy win from RC Racing TV’s Oli Meggitt and Matt Lax. Zack chose not to start the second leg again leaving Rob a clear track to take a comfortable win with Matthew’s Mi4CX again in second giving them a one-two from Oli in third. This wrapped up the Championship for Rob with a perfect score!

So the 2011 BTCC Summer Championship has ended. Schumacher would like to thank all the drivers, clubs and organisers for all their efforts over the season, in what has been possibly one of the best ever series…

Source: Schumacher