A top five finish for Howard Fuller was the highlight of a strong opening weekend of the 2011 Protyre Formula Renault BARC Championship at Donington Park for defending champions Hillspeed.
18-year-old Fuller shone in qualifying to tale seventh place for race one and fifth for race two. Race one didn’t go to plan for him however, when contact on lap one forced him to retire.
The Surrey driver fought back in race two, running in sixth early on after being passed by Josh Webster, he regained fifth when Webster retired. Fuller began charging down fourth placed Steven Durrant, finishing just 0.7s off at the end of the race.
For team-mate Zaamin Jaffer, a tough qualifying session restricted his chances in the races. Race one saw him avoid Fuller’s incident on the first lap and settle into seventh, where he finished to take a good haul of points.
The 21-year-old Indian racer started twelfth in race two and was doing well, getting up to eighth, before contact two laps from the end caused a puncture, forcing him to crawl home in fourteenth.
Competing in his car racing debut was Hillspeed’s final runner Sean Walkinshaw. Finding over a second in pace between the two qualifying sessions, he went on to take seventeenth in race one, before contact in race two forced him to retire early.
Team Principal Richard Ollerenshaw: “It's been a reasonably good weekend for us. Sean has made massive steps forward. It's disappointing a pure racing accident cost him another good points finish in round two but he's positive about everything and is continuing to improve all of the time.
“Zaamin had an excellent first race, he did everything we expected. It was obviously a great shame he received the hit to the back of his car near the end of race two though which led to the puncture and a drop down the order. Howard was very quick but his true potential in race two was marred by some flat spots on his tyres from the race one incident. Even so, he did a fantastic job with fifth.”
