Posted May 07, 2009
Qualifying was fiercely competitive with Current Champion Vic Covey starting where he left of last year with a great Pole position followed by Kenneth Thirlwall 2nd, Mark Dryden 3rd and Chris Knox 4th.
Round 1:
Everyone got away fairly cleanly but Vic Covey made a poor start. Dryden and Knox both made good starts and passed Covey before the first corner. Thirlwall, Knox and Dryden then battled hard for the first few laps with Dryden picking up fastest lap and a lap record on lap 4. Dryden tried an ambitious move round the outside of both Thirlwall and Knox who were both on the defensive line but he out braked himself and under steered wide dropping a couple of seconds back. Covey then sparked back into life and he and Dryden then went about swapping places with some excellent racing.
There was plenty contact for the lead though with Knox and Thirlwall trading paint on a number of occasions. The lead battle settled down towards the end of the race and Thirlwall ending up with the overall win with Knox 1.1 secs behind him. Covey led Dryden in the final lap right up to the final corner where Dryden used the cut back to just steal 3rd on the line. Gronkowski was all alone in 5th with David Sleigh getting a respectable 6th in his first Mini outing. Chris Pearson was 7th with Rowan
Round 2:
A reversal of the top 8 positions was the order of the day for the Minis so that put Michael Rowan on pole with Novice Chris Pearson alongside him. Again Knox made a great start from 7th place and was leading by the end of lap 1 after passing Rowan at the hairpin, Chris Pearson had been muscled out the way on the way to the chicane and lost a lot of places up the back straight. Dryden also made a good start but missed his braking point into Fishersmans and lost the back end and ends up in the infield but rejoins 8th. Thirlwall was also making good progress through the pack and had a good dice with Covey and Gronkowski, the latter out braked himself at the Hairpin and that left him down in 7th. Knox took his first win of the Season with Kenneth 2nd who took a further 2 hundredths off the lap record, the ever present Covey was 3rd, Michael rowan 4th, David Sleigh 5th, Dryden 6th Gronkowski 7th and Pearson 8th
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