King of Clubs Series Rd2 – Report
The second round of this year’s King of Clubs series once again brought juniors, club and factory racers together, this time at the Eastbourne Electric Car Club. The season opener of King of Clubs was run in heavy rain but that did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the drivers who are really getting behind this regional series based in the south of the UK. This time their support was rewarded with glorious sunshine. One of the incentives of KOC is to encourage young races to compete and the Tamiya Junior E class has some budding stars of the future on show, the other main difference to other championships is King of Clubs is an inter club series and now on home soil Eastbourne club were looking increase their lead after taking round one at Aldershot.
In the modified class Jefferies was under pressure all day from Chris Grainger in qualifying but despite the pressure managed to take all four rounds and Grainger would have settle for second on the grid for the A final. Zak Smith was next up for Schumacher. Over the two legs of the modified A final Jefferies kept it clean and quick and took both legs making it a perfect day for the Xray driver. Ben Moorey had great second place in leg one, but it would Grainger that would take second place on the day with Zak Smith completing the modified podium, all the modified drivers getting good track time ahead of next weekend’s BRCA national.
It was another Xray driver in the form of Marcus Askell that was the man to beat in the 13.5 stock class, chased hard all day by Billy Fletcher. TQ man Askell stayed cool out front and took the win ahead of Fletcher and current BRCA stock champion James Hart.
Biggest class on the day was 17.5 with three heats, Jay Westwood took the class win ahead of local driver Stu Colby and Matt Quinlisk, Westwood scoring good points for his Aldershot club in the process.
Michael Lee was once again the man to beat in F1, after tricky wet conditions at the first round at Aldershot the F1 cars looked a lot easier to drive on the dry grippy track of Eastbourne. Daniel Robins and Paul Ellis completed the podium.
Ollie Payne took the victory in the MTC class, adding to his win at Round one at Aldershot, Payne looks the class of the field in MTC and never really looked challenged, the finishing order was the same as qualifying with Tom Dadswell second and Stuart Rand forth
Three Eastbourne drivers headed the Tamiya GT-E class with Karl Mathews taking to win over TQ man Tim Harrop, Tim’s day spoilt by a poor first leg finish, Gavin Lanaway had a good run from sixth on the grid to complete the podium.
In the Tamiya Junior-E class it was once again Archie Mathews that showed everyone a clean pair of heels with Finley Lanaway second. Debutant Oliver Woodhall completed the podium. Like the F1’s, the standard TT02 cars looked a lot more comfortable on a dry Eastbourne track than they did in the rain at Aldershot, and the top three loved their post-race “press conference” interviews.
When the final team points were counted, it was the home side, Eastbourne, winning the round. The West London team improved on their forth place in round 1 to finish a close second.
Source: King of Clubs [facebook.com]
