A wheel rim failure during the maiden race of the new Autosport Young Guns Championship caused the second race at Rockingham to be cancelled as a safety precaution.
The new open wheel series, which runs on the Dunlop Great and British package, will run the second race from Rockingham at another event later on in the season, as Martin Phaff, the Championship co-ordinator explains: “This was a difficult but correct decision to take for this newly formed Championship. The safety of young drivers must always come first and for-most in our minds when making such a decision.”
The failure happened during the first race and it followed on from the same problem earlier in the week during a test session at Pembury, Wales. The failure has caused Phaff to make moves to change supplier before the rest of the season:
“We had a wheel developed and all the testing was done on the first batch” Phaff explained, before going on to add “Then the second batch came in and last week we had a wheel fail at Pembury. We tested them on Thursday and the view was that there was nothing wrong.”
“Then in race one at Rockingham James Nutbrown had a second failure from the same batch, so we took the decision to postpone the second round until a later meeting.”
The next rounds of the series will take place at Snetterton on the 8/9 May, again with the Dunlop Great and British package.
