Weekend Roundup 13th March
Another weekend without rain, and the NEMO Racing team were once again out and competing…
Herts saw a good entry with the good weather and a main outdoor season soon to get underway, and this was evident by plenty of guys getting loads of track time in on the Friday and Saturday before the race on Sunday.
Qualifying saw Darren Bloomfield come out of the blocks fast and strong to take the TQ time in both of the opening rounds, despite not testing the previous days while his main rivals did take that opportunity. These two results saw Darren confirmed as overall TQ for the meeting and allowed him to test some different settings in rounds 3. Team mate Ollie Currie continued his recent good form by taking 4th overall in qualifying with more fast and consistent driving. Callum Niblett was running exceptional pace throughout the day, but the odd error in each run was stopping him from really showing his true pace at the top of the charts, still he would line up 6th on the grid.
In the E-buggy class Jon Hazlewood was out enjoying himself and he too took an excellent overall TQ for the meeting.
The main final saw Darren lead away from pole, but after a making a fairly large set up change in lieu of testing, the car was very different and with no warm up lap to adjust to the changes, he had a tough opening lap and found himself down in 4th. As Darren adjusted to the changes he slowly built up his speed and was able to get up to 2nd and chase leader Elliott Boots. He got the gap down to about 4 seconds before a big crash coming out of pit lane put him back again and he had to settle for 2nd. Callum and Ollie had a tough race, and were not able to get clear of the battle pack and kept getting caught up in other peoples accidents and left themselves in 6th and 7th overall. Darren Warburton had a great day having bumped up from the B final, and would go on to take a great 10th overall.
Jon Hazlewood also suffered a bad start in his E-buggy final, after it settled down he was able to close in on erstwhile leader Kevin Brunsden, but couldn’t quite get on to the back of him, and then on the final lap his battery started to fade and he settled for 2nd.
Back up at Deerdale Jonny Skidmore continued his good astroturf form with another strong event. Lining up 3rd being only Graham Alsop and Neil Cragg, Jonny drove an excellent race to all but keep up with Graham until a few laps from home when a few mistakes dropped him back a bit. Jonny was able to take away the fastest lap of the final though, no mean feat against drivers of this quality..
Next weekend we have the first BRCA event of the season, the opening round of the E-buggy and Truggy Nationals at Deerdale….