James Dorlin has completed a clean sweep of the Oulton Park meeting with victory in Round Two of the 2016 Michelin Clio Cup Series.
The Westbourne Motorsport ace has stormed into the early championship lead courtesy of two pole positions, two race wins and two fastest laps in Cheshire.
The second race proved to be a closer affair than his ten second victory in the opener, but not by much, as Dorlin once again broke clear of the pack in the early stages.
The 2014 Junior Saloon Car Champion posted a fastest lap of 1m 35.778s, his quickest race of the day, as he went on to secure victory by just over nine seconds.
Dorlin’s closest challenger was once again Brett Lidsey, but his efforts to chase down the leader were in vain and he was left to settle for another comfortable second place finish.
The man on the move in the opening stages was Dan Kirby, with the former BMW Compact Cup Championship driver storming through from fifth on the grid to third by the end of the opening lap.
In a race that saw limited overtaking through the field, the most decisive move of the race came on lap four when Luke Pinder removed Kirby from the final podium position.
As the reigning Road Series champion took his maiden outright podium position, Kirby held fourth until the chequered flag despite Tom Barley being in close proximity late on.
Ben Palmer rounded out the top six ahead of Ben Colburn, the latter gaining seventh position when Tyler Lidsey retired on the penultimate lap of the race, while Sam Randon rounded out the race class runners after a subdued race.
In the Road class, Jack Fabby was once again missing from the race action after the Jade Developments team were unable to repair his car following driveshaft failures in both qualifying and race one.
That, coupled with another early retirement for Nic Harrison, meant it was Sarah Franklin who enjoyed a trouble free run to her second class win of the day – with her rivals double DNF’s meaning she was crucially the only class runner to collect race points.
Full race results can be found here.
*Update: Following a post-race stewards decision that was taken to the MSA National Court, Franklin was excluded from the race classification, losing her maximum points score and handing her two points for fastest lap to Harrison.
