This past weekend saw round three of the 2013 BRCA 1:10 TC National Championship take place at the very popular West London Racing Centre track, located only a stone’s throw away from Heathrow Airport. Going into this round, both the Super Touring and Pro Stock championships could be decided in favour of Team Durango’s Elliott Harper and Team Xray’s Zak Finlay respectively. As qualifying got underway, Elliott Harper made his intentions very clear by securing TQ in the first three rounds of qualifying. Schumacher’s Chris Grainger driving the innovative Mi5 chassis was also going strong by securing two second place finishes in rounds one and two. Team Associated’s Olly Jefferies and Serpent’s Chris Kerswell were also in the mix, but it was looking good for Elliott who seemed to have just that slight edge over the rest of the pack. In the last qualifier of the day, Olly really pressed Elliott and made him work hard for his third round TQ – this was great to see! In the Pro Stock class, Zak Finlay drove his Xray T4 chassis to TQ after three rounds and was looking rather untouchable at the front. The Schumacher pairing of Mark Musgrove and Lee Price were next up in second and third respectively, and this was the order in which they would line up for the finals.
After five rounds of qualifying, Elliott was TQ with Chris Grainger second and Chris Kerswell third. In leg one of the finals, Elliott led the A final away with Chris Grainger just able to keep in touch with Elliott – something that we haven’t seen at the previous rounds. Chris then started to decrease the gap significantly with Elliott slowing down at a dramatic rate. After another lap, Elliott came to a complete stop with an unfortunate mechanical failure on his Durango prototype and this meant Chris would take the leg one win. In Leg two it was again Elliot who led the way and again the same problem happened at almost exactly the same time in the race. Chris Grainger was able to capitalise on Elliott’s unfortunate luck and take the leg two win meaning overall victory. It’s never nice seeing a racer have a failure preventing him from winning, but what this does mean is that the championship is still wide open and will be taken to Aldershot next month. Serpent driver Chris Kerswell was able to secure second place overall and the young Team Associated driver Zak Smith managed to secure a fantastic third overall.
In the Pro Stock class. poole sitter Zak Finlay won the first two legs and this meant he was crowned the 2013 BRCA 1:10 Touring Car Pro Stock National Champion. Mark Musgrove was able to drive to second overall with Lee Price taking third. The next round of the BRCA Championship is on the weekend of the 24 August at the Aldershot track.
Photos courtesy of Schumacher Racing.
Look out for a full report from this meeting in the October issue of Racer, on sale 5 September.
