Tim Harvey secured his tenth win out of twelve in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB at Snetterton today after a dominant race which almost went wrong on the last corner for the Championship leader.
After finishing the earlier race in a strong second place, Harvey would start the second race from pole position on his best set of tyres.
A perfect start from the championship leader enabled him to gain a quick advantage as the following field filtered in to the first corner and Michael Caine slotted in to second place. The positions at the top would stay the same until the end of the race.
With Caine closing the gap in the final stages Harvey made a mistake on the final chicane, running wide over the kerbs after pushing past a backmarker, Caine would try to capitalize on the mistake but ultimately didn’t have enough time to pass; if the lap had of been slightly longer then Caine no doubt would have benefited from the mistake. The final margin was 0.054s, less than half a car’s length.
“That was cutting it a bit fine,” said Harvey. “I caught the backmarkers at all the wrong times and I ended up on the kerb. I just sneaked across the line.” Caine acknowledged that apart from Harvey’s mistake there was very little between them: “We were bang on the same pace,” he said.
Stephen Jelly drove well all weekend to take the 'Driver of the weekend' award.
Stephen Jelley would finish on the podium once again as he took third place but felt he could have challenged Caine if it wasn’t for a handling problem that manifested itself during the race. “To start with the car was fantastic, then I had a couple of big moments,” said Jelley. The ex-BTCC driver would come away from Snetterton with the ‘Driver of the weekend’ award with Team Parker collecting the ‘Team of the weekend’ award.
Michael Meadows had a great race to take a fine fourth place as he managed to work his way pass Glynn Geddie after the Scot running wide at Coram.
In sixth place Ollie Jackson rounded out a strong weekend with a second Pro-am1 victory. “The car was absolutely spot on,” said Jackson as he extended his championship lead. Tony Gilham and Jonas Gelzinis fought hard throughout the race with Gilham getting the upper hand by the chequered flag. “We had to guess the set-up after the incident in the first race,” said Gilham. “I had understeer all race, but I managed to pressure Gelzinis into a mistake.”
Ollie Jackson had a good weekend at Snetterton
Paul Mace took a commanding victory in the Pro-am2 class ahead of Glenn McMenamin who managed to hold off George Richardson for second place. “I was staying with the pro-am1 cars, but decided to make sure of pro-am2 victory,” said Mace.
McMenamin’s performance was made even more impressive after being forced to use the tyres he used in the first race as a high speed spin flat spotted his other set of tyres. Richardson did well to battle with McMenamin after stalling off the line.
Racing resumes in two weeks time when the BTCC package heads to Silverstone.
