Michael Epps dominated the field at the Circuit De Spa-Francorchamps as he took his first victory in the VW Racing Cup at the first race of the weekend.
Epps, who started on pole, led the first lap around the Ardennes circuit but going onto the second lap he had slipped down the order and found David Sutton in front of him as well as Howard Fuller breathing down his neck in third.
Indeed the gap between the three drivers was just 0.5 seconds – with Bobby Thompson in fourth closing up rather quickly himself to try and join the train.
A lap later though, and the pace Epps had in chasing down Sutton saw the duo massively pull away from the cars behind, Fuller was slipping to more than a second behind and didn’t look like being able to close up again.
Indeed even Sutton couldn’t hold up the Epps express and saw his lead eroded – indeed he slipped down to fourth place after running wide allowing Fuller and Thompson to claim positions on the podium.
From then on, it wasn’t a question of would Epps win, but by how much. Each time he crossed the line, the lead grew as he decided a policy of flat-out or not at all was the way to go in his Team HARD Racing VW Golf.
In the end he crossed the line with 3.7 seconds in hand over team mate Fuller, who himself managed to hold on from new lap record holder Bobby Thompson who was only 0.4 behind at the chequered flag.
Behind the podium sitters came Sutton who would finish five seconds down on Thompson and will probably count his blessings the race finished when it did as he was only a second ahead of Jack Walker-Tully and quickly slipping into his clutches.
Walker-Tully was also at increasing risk from Lucas Orrock – who slipped a place from his starting position – who had no risk of attack from behind with seventh placed Aaron Mason almost nine seconds behind him on track.
The second VW Racing Cup race of the weekend takes place at 11.30am Central European Time tomorrow.
