Last weekend Logan ran their Summer Cup with the gas cars on Friday and electrics running Saturday evening. The same track from last year is still down however this event was run in the reverse direction for a change. This meant there was only 1 hairpin where you are breaking from high speed giving the track a better flow and making it much easier on the cars and equipment.
In stock 2 of the top 3 finishers from the Nationals were present in Andrew Shapland and Keith Mackrill with his new car after finally moving on from the mighty Pro 4. With Michael Sherman, Darren Matthews and Karl Yeung who has been on the rise lately in the mix the racing was sure to be close.
Andrew Shapland managed to take the TQ despite juggling 2 cars with running modified aswell.
In the finals Andrew won the first main, Keith won the seccond leaving it all to play for in the third main. Keith got a good start moving up to seccond and challenging for the lead when Andrew clipped the corner dot in the tricky chichane running onto the back straight. Keith was unable to capitilise, taking an even bigger chunk of the same corner dot and ending up on the grass. Allowing Andrew to take the leg and thus the overall win from Keith. Karl Yeung had a couple of great drives finishing third in A1 and seccond in A3 giving him third place overall. Well done Karl.
Modified had quite a few new faces which was great to see. Including Nigel Brokenshire and Andrew Shapland who were both running Mod for the first time.
In qualifying John Perkins, Martin Nichols and Andrew Shapland where all not only turning fast best laps but also managed to post quick 5 minute runs to qualify ahead of Peter Dooley and Leonard Lai. Despite a couple of small mistakes I managed to take the TQ.
I got a good start for the first main and managed to stay ahead of a big battle involving several cars. This allowed me to pull away for the win as they were swapping places and trying to hold their positions. John Perkins crossed the line ahead of Leonard Lai. However for some reason these 2 cars failed to have a couple of their laps counted. John had his laps corrected while unluckily for Leonard his were not, relegating him to 6th place.
I had another good start in the seccond main. This time however the rest of the field was a little more spread out allowing John to concentrate on chasing me instead of holding off a car behind him. We were both steadily pulling away when tragedy struck. John hit the inside pipe as the track comes back to running parallel with the back straight after the very fast left hand side sweeper this sent his car flying over onto the main straight where it was hit in a sickening head on by Leonard who was at full speed and had no chance to react to the car coming the other way down the straight. Marshalls rushed to out but nothing could be done for either car. It was the end of the night for both drivers. Peter crossed for seccond narrowly ahead of Martin.
We lined up for the third main with 2 empty slots on the grid. Peter made good use of the clear spaces jumping up to seccond in the frist corner. This time it was Peter chasing hard when he made an almost identical mistake to what John had made in the race before. This time luckily no other cars were involved. However unluckily for Pete he was marshalled to the wrong section of the track allowing Martin up into seccond place which was enough to give him seccond overall ahead of Peter.
All in all it was a good night of racing. Well done to the Logan club for hosting another succesful Summer Cup.
Untill next time,
Anthony Atack