A Very Rapid Julian.
After last week’s unusually small turnout of just six drivers, it was a return to normal this week with a full twelve-car grid for the first of April’s Sideways GT3 rounds.
Julian appears to have found the secret to making a Sideways GT3 car go very fast indeed, his Aston two tenths quicker than second-placed Lee’s Ford GT and in a completely different league to everyone else. A lot of his advantage over the also-rans is down to his superior driving, but a two-tenths gap to Lee is huge, so Lee has his work cut out if he wants to build a car that will let him challenge for victory at the next race.
With Julian winning comfortably and Lee equally comfortable in second, the first of the night’s battles was between David and Terry for third, a battle that went down to the wire. David beat Terry by six tenths in heat 1, and despite Terry pressurising David for the remainder of the race and the gap between the two never greater than 2.8 seconds, he couldn’t quite find enough to get ahead, David eventually taking the podium’s bottom step.
The battle for sixth between Neil and Ed was equally close. Ed, who’s not done much racing this year and was looking a little rusty, started well, finishing three tenths ahead of Neil in heat 1. He stretched his lead to almost five seconds in heat 2 before Neil found his rhythm and started his fight back, narrowing the gap to four seconds after heat 3, 1.48 after heat 4, and finally getting ahead in heat 5 to take a four tenths lead into the final heat. Try as he might, Ed couldn’t quite close the gap, eventually finishing 1.75 seconds down on Neil. Close, but not close enough.
Jim’s race was bittersweet. Sweet, because he won a heat for the first time at Molesey, but bitter because a disastrous heat 5 cost him at least twelve seconds, possibly more, and without that error he may well have been challenging for group honours. Still, he’s now regularly finishing in the top half of his group, so if his progress continues at the rate it has done so far, it will be interesting to see where it gets him.
