Ashley Sutton dominated the second race of the weekend at Snetterton for the Dunlop MSA Formula Ford Championship of Great Britain, making up for his third place finish in Saturday’s race one. The MBM Motorsport racer nabbed the lead of the reversed grid race on the second lap before putting the hammer down to open the gap by over a second a lap. Sutton took the Scholarship victory in addition to the overall win.
The first move of the race from Sutton came at Palmer on lap one where the #16 car dispatched the Falcon Motorsport run Mygale of Ricky Collard. Riches on the second lap saw Sutton into the lead after he rocketed past the Radical Motorsport entry of James Abbott. Collard also made the move but wasn’t able to stay within shouting distance of the runaway leader.
While the Falcon machine wasn’t up to chasing down the leader it was more than enough to keep Collard ahead of the scrap for third. Abbott fought a strong rear-guard action to keep championship leader Harrison Scott for Falcon and JTR Motorsport’s Jayde Kruger behind. Both were doomed to failure as was a similar struggle against JTR racer and race one winner Max Marshall.
Abbott eventually placed sixth ahead of his team mate Juan Rosso. Chris Mealin for Falcon, Louise Richardson for the family run Richardson Racing team and Greg Holloway for SWB Motorsport rounded out the top ten.
There was only one retirement in the race, Michael O’Brien who completed a MBM sandwich after he retired halfway through the race. The new-comer reported that it was a tactical decision to save tyres rather than a problem with his Mygale-Scholar.
“My second win is every bit as good as my first,” said Sutton, who took his first victory at Croft in June. “I think they’re all as good as each other! I tried to go around the two of them at the hairpin on the opening lap, but it didn’t quite work out and I managed to pass only Collard that lap. Then on the next lap James ran a little wide into turn one so I was able to pass him into turn two; after that it was just a case of maintaining the gap.”
“This feels like a win to me,” Collard added. “We are improving all the time and getting our heads around the car’s cooling system and it is coming on in leaps and bounds. If we can get some other technical issues sorted we will be on terms with Ashley and fighting for wins.”
