Pietro Fittipaldi has taken his sixth consecutive victory in the Protyre Formula Renault championship in the first race at Snetterton. The MGR Motorsport driver headed a 1-2-3 for the defending champion team and increased his lead in the championship to 31 points after dropped scores. Tarun Reddy and Matteo Ferrer grabbed second and third for the Leicestershire team.
From the start of the race it looked as if the story would be different as pole sitter Alex Gill for Fortec Motorsport and Scorpio Motorsport’s Piers Hickin both shot off like the robbers dog. After securing first and second respectively for the opening lap the pair were judged to have jumped the start and were handed a drive through penalty. Both pitted at the end of lap three, they forfeited the lead of the race and went on to finish in fourth and sixth respectively.
While Gill established a lead following his false start, Hickin didn’t manage to escape the clutches of the Miami born hotshot Fittipaldi. They dueled through Riches before the Scorpio man could assert his position. Gill, Hickin and Fittipaldi lapped almost in unison until the penalties were applied which robbed us of a fantastic race in prospect. Fittipaldi dominated the action, building a nine second lead over his Indian team mate and grabbing the two points for the fastest lap.
The battle for second was no less energetic because it was fought between team mates. Ferrer pushed the pace against Reddy from the halfway mark. Reddy eventually found the extra pace he needed to pull out a 1.5 second advantage over the Italian and take his career best finish in Protyre Formula Renault.
“I got a very good start,” Reddy commented. “I almost passed the driver in front of me at the first corner but backed off as it could have led to an incident. After that, I drove a consistent race.”
Alex Gill recovered as best he could from his penalty and in a brave move at Montreal on the final lap, he seized fourth place from Cliff Dempsey Racing’s TJ Fischer.
Scorpio Motorsport’s Piers Hickin took sixth place, dominating the MTech Lite entry of Hayden Edmunds. The #89 machine finished over 27 seconds behind the former race winner though he still managed to put almost fifteen seconds between his Tatuus FR2000 and that of SWB Motorsport and Jack Butel.
Patick Dussault for Cliff Dempsey and Colin Noble for MGR rounded out the entries, all of whom finished the twelve lap race.