The 2014 BTCC Series opener from West London race report

  

The 2014 BTCC Series kicked off in fine style at the superb West London venue, with over 110 drivers booked in for the event. The weather was dry for Saturday which saw many of the drivers use the day for a lot of practice to get their cars fine tuned ready for race day on Sunday.

However what greeted us all Sunday morning was rain, followed by more heavy rain, the weather was going to make for some very interesting racing!

The race classes for this year's BTCC, following on from a successful Series last year are 17.5 Blinky class, 13.5t and Modified.

Due to the adverse wetaher conditions we decided on round by round qualifying for the format, so it was your best 2 from 4 qualifying runs that would count towards the overall final position, followed by 1 final for everyone.

The rain stopped during the first round of qualifying and throughout the day the track dried slowly. It stayed this way all the way through until the last few finals and then the rain started to fall again.

There was some fantastic close racing in the 17.5 Blinky class but it was Dominic Skinner who would line up on pole position just ahead of a very close grid. After the A final had taken place the result was as follows:

17.5 Blinky A Final
1 Mark Passingham
2 Mark Young
3 Dominic Skinner
4 Chris House
5 Andy Tietjen
6 Dani Young
7 Chris Graco
8 Kris Kennedy
9 Lewis Brown
10 Malc Hall

Moving onto 13.5 and the drivers in this class had a big decision to make, just before the final, the rain started to come down again and drivers were undecided between wet or slick tyres as the rain was very light. Everyone opted for slicks except for pole sitter Zak Finlay who made the brave call to go on wets, it was a decision that would see him go off in the distance having more grip than anyone else in the changing track conditions.
So the final result was:

13.5 A Final
1 Zak Finlay
2 Rob West
3 Daniel Booker
4 Leigh Dibble
5 Lee Price
6 David Usher
7 James Baker
8 Ben Putt
9 Spencer Jones
10 Nathan Wilson

Finally moving onto the Modified class, by now the track was damp so everyone opted for wet tyres as far as we know.
After the final the result was:

Modified A Final
1 Olly Jefferies
2 James Hart
3 Colin Price
4 John Pape
5 Stefan Chodzynski
6 Matt White
7 Paul Pinkney
8 Brian Eldridge
9 Ashley Wiffen
10 David Hall

After the racing had finished the trophy presentation and the traditional Schumacher BTCC raffle was completed, some great prices once again from Schumacher Racing and several hundred pounds of prizes was given away.

Congratulations to all the Final winners and also to the raffle winners.

Rob Chaldecott looking very pleased here after winning one of the star prizes, a Racing Star 16amp charger.
 
A huge thanks as always goes to Paul and the rest of the team at the West London race track, who helped put on a great event with us once again. Also to Kris Kennedy for the usual superb commentary he provided us all with for the finals.

The next round of the Series is being held at the Halifax race track on Sunday, May 4, 2013, entries are still available, so get yourself booked in through www.centralbooking.org if you haven't already done so.
  

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