Porsche Carrera Cup GB championship leader Daniel Harper took a commanding lights to flag victory around the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit to record his seventh win of the 2019 campaign and extend his advantage at the top of the standings.
From his fifth pole position of the season, a great launch off the line ensured Harper led the field through Abbey for the first time and from there the 2018/19 Porsche GB Junior driver wouldn’t be caught, pulling a 1.8 second gap by the end of lap one.
The Northern Irishman eventually took the chequered flag 5.2 seconds clear, with his efforts aided by a battle developing for second between Josh Webster and Lewis Plato. Struggling with oversteer, Webster had to defend hard to maintain his position.
Plato had a couple of opportunities to make a move, but Webster fended him off to take his third consecutive second place finish. Plato recorded his eighth podium finish of the year, while behind George Gamble ran in a clear fourth place throughout.
A fiercely contested battle between Jamie Orton and Seb Perez for fifth place eventually came to blows, with Orton nudged off track at Maggotts on lap five before an attempted move at Abbey two laps later led to a spin. Benefitting most was Dan Vaughan, who passed both to finish fifth.
Perez took sixth at the flag, while a fantastic seventh overall for his first Pro Am win in the championship was Sam Brabham. It was Esmee Hawkey who had started from pole, but a skirmish on the opening lap left her stranded in the Copse gravel trap.
Karl Leonard took over the class lead, however he had no answer for the pace of Brabham who swept past at Village and went on to win by five seconds. Leonard meanwhile was left in a close fought three way battle for second with Jack McCarthy and Adam Hatfield.
The emergence of recovering Pro contender Tom Roche, a spinner at The Loop on lap one, eventually settled the Pro Am fight. Getting in between McCarthy and Hatfield, as they battled it allowed Leonard to pull clear for second and with it the Pro Am points lead.
Roche eventually got ahead of both for ninth overall, with McCarthy completing the Pro Am podium ahead of Hatfield. Orton completed a wild race in 12th ahead of John Ferguson, who came through from fifth in class on the grid to take the Am class victory.
It was an action-packed race in the class, with Peter Kyle-Henney suffering an early spin, before contact later on with Dan Kirby on the Wellington Straight led to a race-ending puncture for him and a high-speed spin for Kirby.
Adam Knight was the class leader over the first half of the race, however he too would spin after running in close proximity with JTR stablemate Orton. Ferguson therefore came through for a fourth win of the year from points leader Justin Sherwood, Knight and Kirby.
Full race result: http://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com/
