The Second round of the BRCA 200mm Touring series took place at the fast flowing Brooklands track in south east England over the weekend. Once again the British weather was not looking good for the weekend, and Saturday proved a washout, on a very cold day, just as the track started to dry it rained again! It did give a chance for some more wet weather testing, which again showed the NT1 is awesome on rubber tyres! Some of the Xray team decided to call it a day early, and headed back to the hotel for a debrief and some much needed Playstation practise!
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The race organizers decided to give everyone a much needed, almost dry 10 minute practise heat early on the Sunday morning, the track continued to dry and by round two was starting to get some grip. The sun even made a rare appearance and stayed for most of the day! After a close fought qualifying battle Darren Johnson took TQ less than a second ahead of Robin Hammett (NT1), with Kyle Branson in third ahead of Mark Gilliland (NT1) and Gareth Bell (NT1). Again the NT1 proved to be the fastest and best handling chassis with five NT1's in the A final, with Aaron Wearn putting his NT1 in its first A final of the season despite no practise!
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After a clean start to the final Darren and Robin started to pull out a small gap on third, and with nothing to chose between them on the track the race was going to be decided in the pits! Darren's pit man Alex, did a fantastic first stop which gave him a small gap after the first round of stops, and this enabled him to have some clear track and just make sure of no mistakes. The Brooklands track is very fast and bumpy in places and is very hard to not make mistakes! In the last few laps Gareth managed to get by Kyle to get his NT1 onto the podium, and make it a fantastic 1,2,3 for team Xray.
Final results:
1 Darren Johnson XRAY NT1
2 Robin Hammet XRAY NT1
3 Gareth Bell XRAY NT1
4 Kyle Branson
5 Neal King
6 Stephen Brown 7 Aaron Wearn XRAY NT1
8 Adam Walker Catchpole 9 Mark Gilliland XRAY NT1
10 Jonathan Dobney