UK Nationals R2 Wakefield Podium

The 2nd round of the BRCA National series took place at Wakefield after the postponement of the originally scheduled Coventry round.
The weather was good, and the track was as always excellent leading to some close racing and great competition.
In qualifying the Agama drivers were putting in some great performances to place themselves near the top of the times sheets. Darren Bloomfield was running at TQ pace in pretty much all of the rounds, but a few errors kept him from taking the round wins his pace probably deserved. Jon Hazlewood was showing some renewed form and was posting top 5 times and was unlucky with an engine cut with his car landing on a wooden steak and touching the flywheel in another. Tony Truman, Jonny Skidmore, Ollie Currie, Leon Goode and Richard Barton were all in the hunt and posting competitive times as the recent new parts added to the cars proved a real step forward in performance pushing the team closer to the top of the leader board.
With plenty of cars in the semi finals, the team were confident of a good group of them progressing through to the main final itself, and this was the case with 4 of the team making it through to the final.
Darren would line up 3rd, Tony Truman 7th, Jonny Skidmore 11th and Richard Barton 13th. A fantastic result there for Jonny Skidmore in making his first National A Final. His recent form has been excellent, especially from the Euro B in Madrid and he richly deserves this breakthrough result.
The main final itself saw Darren start very strongly and challenge for the lead and take it, in the early stages, but as the race wore on a few mistakes dropped him back and he would finish where he started in 3rd. An excellent drive from Tony Truman resulted in a great 5th overall and a return to form for the driver from Bicester. Jonny Skidmore was far from overawed in his first main final, and improved his position to take an excellent 8th overall with Richard Barton coming in 12th.
The BETA tyres were once again performing superbly, with 5 drivers making the main final and also 5 BULLITT engines in the show.

The series moves on to a new venue at Kent for the next round and we will be looking forward to a strong performance from the team there also.

Dave Duggan