Aaron Mason took his second win of the season in round three of the APR Volkswagen Racing Cup at Rockingham, leading the opening race of the day from lights-to-flag.
Mason made a great start to maintain his top spot from pole position, holding off two more quick-starting Sciroccos of Martin Depper and Phil House into the tight Deene hairpin for the first time, former double champion House the man emerging in second spot as the trio made their escape.
Oulton Park race winner Ross Wylie was the first man to suffer a spin exiting Yentwood, before front-row starter Joe Fulbrook threw away a top three spot with a half-spin at Kirby having slipped to fourth initially, dropping down to 13th place where he was forced to stage a recovery drive for the rest of the race.
Team HARD’s David Sutton was the biggest beneficiary as he was now fourth having started 10th, although he then came under big pressure from the mean behind him, Didge Dziurzynski moving by into fourth place before leaving James Walker to attack the Golf GTI driver.
Walker had charged up to sixth place from 13th on the grid, and nudged Sutton’s identical Golf wide at Deene hairpin on lap four, KPM’s Stewart Lines also following through. By the time they reached Tarzan however, Walker braked too late for the hairpin, sliding off the circuit and into the gravel, the reigning champion retiring at the end of the lap.
While the top four cars escaped with Mason leading by just over a second, Henry Gilbert and the recovering Fulbrook both went by Sutton, Tom Barley also disposing of his HARD stable mate into Tarzan.
The battle ahead for fifth was the focal point of the remaining action, Lines holding the spot ahead of the charging Fulbrook, who passed Gilbert’s Golf but lost out after running deep exiting Kirby, reclaiming the spot at Deene a lap later.
Fulbrook then tried an optimistic move around the outside of the Scirocco of Lines into Deene, almost losing out to Gilbert before making a more successful move around the outside of the KPM driver uner braking for the final chicane on lap 11 to seal fifth.
Mason meanwhile was unchallenged, finishing 1.8s ahead of House who took the first podium of his return season, Depper completing the podium ahead of Dziurzynski and the recovering Fulbrook.
Sixth was grabbed by Gilbert at the first corner in the dying moments of the race, Lines slipping to seventh ahead of Barley, Andy Wilmot and Jim Cartwright rounding out to top 10.