Ant Whorton-Eales secured a lights-to-flag victory ahead of his Renault UK Clio Cup championship rival Mike Bushell in the second race of the weekend at Silverstone.
It was Bushell who started from pole position, but a lightning getaway from Whorton-Eales gave him the advantage, which he would go on to maintain from start-to-finish.
Things were far from easy for the JamSport Racing ace however, with Bushell piling him under pressure throughout, with the gap between them never reaching four tenths of a second.
Those two weren’t alone either, as at the halfway point of the eighteen lap encounter there was a mammoth ten car train at the front split by less than three seconds.
Leading the chasing pack for the first portion of the race was Josh Price, with Max Coates, Senna Proctor and Paul Rivett in hot pursuit – the latter two switching positions at Brooklands on lap three.
Price’s challenge at the front came to an end on lap seven however as he dived into the pitlane to serve a drive through penalty for a jump start, which promoted Coates into third.
While the pack ran closely over the second half of the race, there were no further changes of position in the top nine, with Whorton-Eales leading them for his eighth victory of the season.
Bushell and Coates rounded out the podium for their twelfth and sixth rostrums of the campaign so far, with that result confirming the latter as this year’s Graduate Cup champion.
Masters Cup victor Lee Pattison wasn’t far behind meanwhile, completing the top six behind Rivett and Proctor, while Luke Kidsley and James Colburn were seventh and eighth respectively.
One of the stars of the race meanwhile was Paul Streather, who incredibly rose ten positions in the opening two laps alone and set the fastest lap of the race en-route to ninth overall.
Ollie Pidgley completed the top ten, while Chris Smiley took eleventh on the road, but lost three places as a result of a five second time penalty for exceeding track limits.
Another driver to be handed a track limits penalty was Jake Giddings, though repeat offences for the Finesse Motorsport driver saw ten seconds added to his time, putting him sixteenth.
Price recovered from his drive-through to finish seventeenth ahead of George Jackson, who had been involved in early contact with Ben Davis at Copse that led to the latter’s retirement.
Also failing to make the finish of the race was Charlie Ladell, who was forced to pull off the circuit after suffering damage during some robust early battles with David Dickenson amongst others.
Full race results can be found here.
