Ollie Chadwick once again proved his dominance in the opening Ginetta GT5 Challenge race of the weekend. Making a clean start, he soon opened up a large gap to those behind him courtesy of Ryan Hadfield‘s 10 second penalty.
As the lights went out at Croft, Chadwick maintained his lead into the first corner. Ian Robinson made a strong getaway from fourth but was unable to find a way past R Hadfield.
A jump start for Ryan saw the officials slap a ten-second penalty on him, ensuring that the race would come down to Hadfield’s ability to pull away from the pack. Meanwhile, brother Jonathan Hadfeild went wide at Sunny In, dropping to ninth.
The top 3 soon broke away, while behind, Jack Minshaw went straight on as he out-braked himself. It was later revealed there were issues with his vehicle and retired as a result.
The middle of the race was spent with the field squabbling over fourth place. Andrew Richardson was the initial cork in the bottle holding the field behind. J Hadfield spent the race working his way back up after his off.
Before long it was Tom Hibbert who’d worked his way up to fourth as he quickly found himself under pressure from Matt Chapman. Unfortunately for the TCR driver he got onto the grass at turn four dropping a number of positions.
All of this allowed J Hadfield back into contention as he worked his way past Nick Zapolski and Richardson. With one lap to go he finally got in front as Hibbert was quickly swamped.
After a final lap dash for fourth was eventually organised, Chadwick crossed the line a few seconds in front of R Hadfield who had performed exceptionally to have kept up with the championship leader. Robinson rounded out the podium after a fairly lonely second half.
A dramatic midfield battle saw J Hadfield come out on top as Zapolski and Richardson rounded out the top six. At the back of the pack, Chapman and Matt Flowers managed to salvage a few points, but will be disappointed with the result.
