Huddersfield’s Richard Kershaw took his second Britpart B.C.C.C. victory of the season as the championship returned to the Glanusk estate near Crickhowell. Dan Lofthouse took second place and Steven Smith claimed third.Rain in the lead up to the event meant that the course was extremely slippery and the crews treated the opening runs with caution. Tim Dilworth set the early pace, building up a lead of 47 seconds over Kershaw in the first four runs.
The challenging route was causing some casualties amongst the crews, Brian Farmer rolling his Peugeot following a bad landing after a jump, Martin Gould suffering two stage maximums as his Mattserati picked up two punctures and then broke a propshaft, and Alan Wilkinson putting his Milner off the road at a hairpin.
The remaining three runs of day one saw Kershaw fight back against Dilworth on a drying track, pushing hard in his GSR 206 Evo 9 to end the day with a lead of eight seconds. Lofthouse was a further four minutes back in third. Ian Rochelle joined the casualty list with a broken suspension arm on his Millingon Mattserati while Paul Myers suffered power steering failure in the Britpart 100.
Dilworth was immediately on the pace for the opening runs of day two, putting himself back into the lead but then disaster struck, the steering on his Peugeot 206 STi breaking at 70mph causing the car to crash. The resulting stage maximums pushed Dilworth down the leaderboard leaving Kershaw to claim victory by over nine minutes from Lofthouse.
After a tough event Kershaw was pleased with the victory. “It’s been a good event and we’ve come out with the victory we wanted. We’ve had some fantastic racing on a challenging course.”
Lofthouse was happy to follow up his victory in the previous round with second at Glanusk. “We had a reliable weekend, the event has been quite difficult with a tough course. We didn’t have the speed of Richard or Tim so it’s good to take second.”
Steven Smith showed consistent pace all weekend and, apart from a slight incident with a tree, stayed relatively trouble-free to take third place in his JRG Indy 2 while the Bowler Wildcat of Colin Gould took fourth.
Bob Seaman was fifth overall and also won the Trophy category. The Bartletts returned to the championship with Gary taking sixth and Ian eighth. They were split by Phil Ibbotson who survived some gearbox problems in his Metro 6R4 Evo on day two to finish seventh. Rounding off the top ten were Tony Coid in his battle-scarred Tomcat and Tim Dilworth.
The championship ends with round 6 at Driffield in three weeks.
Results
1. Richard Kershaw GSR 206 Evo 9 2:10:51
2. Dan Lofthouse Lofthouse Proto LD4 2:20:00
3. Steven Smith JRG Indy 2 2:31:52
4. Colin Gould Bowler Wildcat 2:33:32
5. Bob Seaman Milner R4 2:35:26
6. Ian Bartlett Bartletts 3M206 2:35:48
7. Phil Ibbotson Metro 6R4 Evo 2:36:46
8. Gary Bartlett Milner R4 2:39:04
9. Tony Coid Tomcat 100 2:39:58
10. Tim Dilworth Peugeot 206 STi 2:44:25
Trophy Winner: Bob Seaman Milner R4
