Ben Colburn mastered damp conditions to bag a pair of second position starts in the Junior Saloon Car Championship, while Westbourne’s latest protégée Matteo Zanetti really impressed with 5th and 6th position in his first ever qualifying
In Junior Saloon Cars it was then left it to Ben and Matteo to take centre stage to see if they could emulate their older team mates. A fantastic start saw Ben take the lead by the first corner, followed closely by championship rival Scott Mitchell. Scott encountered gearbox problems early on, leaving Ben to pull away and win the first race of 2015 by nearly eight seconds. Matteo did a fantastic job in his first race running strongly and finishing fifth, overtaking some more experienced drivers on the way.
In Junior Saloons Ben and Matteo lined up for the Sunday race looking to build on Saturday’s great results.
Ben made a dream start to lead pole sitter Scott Mitchell into the first corner. Matteo dropped a couple of places on the line, but was soon on the back of a six car pack fighting for third place. This enable to Ben and Scott to pull away by over six seconds with Scott getting ever closer. The boys went side to side on several occasions with some excellent clean racing, before Scott’s driveshaft broke coming onto the banked oval just after half distance. This gave Ben an easy coast to the end winning the race by over thirty seconds a dream start with 50 points to take the championship lead.
Matteo was fighting back hard and had moved up to fifth with a amazing move into Deene hairpin, over taking two cars at once, only to find gear selection problems ground the car to a halt. He entered the pits but the fault was not repairable so he had to tour slowly round to take the finish.
Two great drivers ….. we look forward to the first Westbourne one, two very soon.
