After a very short off season, Saturday 19th March saw the opening event for Westbourne Motorsport at the Oulton Park, Cheshire.
Oulton is always one of the most testing events of the year as a whole weekend’s motorsport is rolled into one day so for a team with seven cars it is a mighty effort. Back at the workshop the team had been working frantically to get everything ready in time, with cars to both re shell and re paint it took a super human effort to get it done. Needless to say to cars arrived sparkling for the Friday test and all went well with little drama throughout the day.
Saturday saw Race & Road Clio’s qualify at 09.00 in the morning, with both James Dorlin (race) and Sarah Franklin(road) getting out of bed the right side to take double pole in both races. Sam Randon qualified in 4th after a small excursion interrupted his qualifying and Ben Colburn had an incident at the Knickerbrook chicane damaging the front of the car in the process at his first Clio race meeting.
In JSCC our three driver line up included returning Matteo Zanetti, new to the team Finlay Robinson and series debutante Adam Batty. Qualifying was extremely close with Adam and Matteo featuring 2nd and 3rd until the last lap until they got piped to finish (race 1 / race 2) 4th & 2nd Matteo, 5th & 4th Adam and 11th and 9th Finlay.
Clio race 1 saw a James Dorlin master class as he pulled away from second place Brett Lidsey to win by over seven seconds for his first Clio win. Sam finished third with an intermittent power loss and Ben completed his first race in the Michelin Clio series learning at every lap. Sarah Franklin got a good start before being overhauled by rival Nick Harrison but a mistake later saw Sarah retake the position and bring the car home for again her first Clio win.
Clio race 2 was pretty much a repeat of the first with Dorlin and Franklin dominating. Sam Randon suffered a valve timing failure rendering him helplessly to the back of the grid and Ben bought to car home in 7th.
Twenty three cars lined up for the junior JSCC races and for some in the field it was to be their first ever race. It was an extremely frantic battle up front with pole sitter Ed Moore leading the pack away before George Sutton overhauled him and broke away whilst the others traded places corner by corner. Zanetti worked his way up to 3rd for a podium finish setting fastest lap in the process, whilst Adam Batty and Finlay Robinson both enjoyed great races finishing 5th and 10th respectively.
Race 2 say Matteo line up on the front row opposite Moore and both made poor get aways with Moore just holding the lead whilst Matteo dropped to third behind race 1 winner Sutton. Sutton passed Moore on lap 3 looking ready for his second win. A four car train with inches apart of Sutton, Moore, Zanetti and Batty circulated as one for the next two laps until Zanetti passed Moore to grab second. Now on the tail of Sutton there was only one outcome as Zanetti turned on the pressure and dived down the inside into Old Hall on lap 6. Head down Matteo posted fastest lap of the day 1.48.8 and pulled away to win his first ever JSCC race. Adam Batty drove superbly on his first weekend and posted 2nd fastest lap, less than a 0.1 seconds off Matteo. Meanwhile Findlay Robinson was having a race long duel with Harry Bishops and both cars emerged without a mark, a credit to both drivers with Finlay taking the upper hand to finish a very respectable tenth.
First race meeting 5 out 6 wins, 6 out of 6 fastest laps – three championship leaders – bring on 2016.