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SYMMETRY AT
SILVERSTONE FOR FORMULA FORD
ROUNDS 23 &
24,
SILVERSTONE GP 9 OCTOBER 2011: Six months ago at Silverstone,
Scott Malvern, Geoff Uhrhane and Jeroen Slaghekke shared the race
victories in the opening rounds of the Dunlop MSA Formula Ford
Championship of Great Britain on the Silverstone National circuit.
This weekend, on Silverstone's Grand Prix track layout, the same
trio of drivers shared the spoils in the concluding races of the
2011 season to give the championship a symmetrical send-off.
All three of the
Silverstone races offered barnstorming excitement and a great
display of driving skills from the front-runners. Today, champion
Scott bounced back from his Saturday retirement to take his 18th
win of the British season, and Slaghekke secured victory in the
grand finale, and with it championship second.
His Duratec-powered
Mygale repaired for battle thanks to some late-night work by Jamun
Racing, Scott Malvern repaid his mechanics' toil with a pole-to-chequered
flag victory in the second Silverstone race.
Malvern made an
exceptional start to assume command from the outset as Geoff
Uhrhane struggled to get his JTR car off the line on a damp track.
Geoff's slowish getaway allowed Jeroen Slaghekke to nip through
for second, from which position the Dutchman set about harrying
his championship-winning team-mate for the lead.
Jeroen's hopes of
victory were curtailed on lap five by an error which saw Malvern's
lead extended from 0.3s to 1.1s. "I went a bit wide coming
out of the chicane, put my wheels on a damp patch, and that cost
me a lot of time," said Slaghekke. "Scott did a great
job and I wasn't able to catch back up with him."
Malvern went on to
claim victory by eight-tenths. It was his 18th win of the Dunlop
MSA Formula Ford Championship of Great Britain season, and his
24th of the year as a whole including his separate EuroCup
victories. He was delighted and grateful: "The Jamun boys
worked late into the night to fit a borrowed engine, so all thanks
to them and to Geva, who lent us the engine. I got great traction
off the line, and the car was set up well for the conditions… I
just had to guide it around."
Once he had got
going and disentangled himself from the clutches of Antti Buri,
Uhrhane moved into a safe third. "It was definitely hard to
start on the wet side of the track; it was a little hard to get
off the line and I think that's where I lost the race," said
Geoff. "I should have had the pace to keep with the front two
and fight for the lead but I just couldn't quite bridge the gap
after the first two laps."
The scrap for
fourth involved five cars at its height and boiled down in the
closing laps to a duel between Buri and Dan de Zille, the Finn
finally getting the upper hand with two laps remaining. De Zille
was three-tenths behind at the line for sixth. Van Diemen man Matt
Parry took seventh, leading home Philippe Layac, Jack Le Brocq and
Luke Williams. Max Marshall was again the Scholarship victor.
"It went really well apart from my start which was pretty
awful. Once my tyres came up to temperature the car was good and I
made some good progress," said Max.
The Formula
Fordsters saved their best for last - delivering a superb final
round in the gathering gloom at the end of Silverstone's racing
weekend. Slaghekke was the first man to try his luck in front,
rocketing off the line to seize the advantage from poleman Uhrhane
into Copse Corner. By Maggotts, however, it was Uhrhane in charge
and the Aussie went on to pull a 1.2s lead by the end of the
3.7-mile lap.
Malvern was pushed
back to sixth on the opening lap and it took the champion two laps
to fight his way back to third, from which position he had
started. He soon closed down Slaghekke's advantage but neither
looked to have much hope of catching Uhrhane until a small error
from Geoff on lap five allowed them to reacquaint themselves with
the back of his Mygale.
The final three
laps were a frenzy of pass and counter-pass, attacks and
repulsions as the season's only race winners battled to add to
their tally. Slaghekke nosed ahead at Club Corner on the
penultimate tour and he and Uhrhane ran pretty much side by side
all the way to Luffield, where Geoff locked up, slid wide and
handed the advantage to his rival.
Last time down the
Hangar straight Uhrhane tried valiantly to repass but had to give
best to Slaghekke, and also defend his second place from the
attentions of Malvern, who at one stage looked set to go past both
his rivals. Slaghekke crossed the line two-tenths ahead of Uhrhane
to record his third win of the season and, more importantly, to
secure second in the championship. "It's such a relief,"
said Jeroen. "It was a very tense race. We dropped Scott but
he was so quick that he was soon on our tails again. Geoffrey
fought very hard, and very fairly, and I won in the end, so I'm
very happy."
The man Slaghekke
pipped for championship second by all of three points was his
team-mate Nick McBride, who finished the race sixth, behind de
Zille and Buri, and 5s ahead of his visiting countryman Jack Le
Brocq. Neil Alberico claimed eighth for Ray and the Cliff Dempsey
Racing team, with Tristan Mingay and Philippe Layac ninth and 10th
respectively.
The Scholarship
class honours went to Fluid Motorsport's Matt Rao after his class
rival, JTR's Max Marshall, fell by the wayside on the final lap.
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