SUPER ONE SERIES - ROUND 3
Team Quinn made the long journey to the Scottish track, just south of Glasgow knowing that championship leader, would be hard competition this weekend as this was his home track. Alex had a good test day ahead of qualifying on the Saturday.
The weather was the talking point of the weekend and luckily Timed Qualifying and the two heats on the Saturday were held in dry weather.
In the opening of qualifying, Alex and his rival played cat and mouse and swapped places several times.
Early into the session, another driver crashed into the plastic barriers and officials displayed the battenburg flag which means all drivers proceed at a steady pace in single file behind ‘the leader’
Alex strategically placed himself in a good position with just enough gap behind a driver in front and chased the pack down and secured 3rd fastest time.
Heat 1 and Alex got a clean start and maintained P3 with the front 3 extending a healthy gap over the rest of the pack. In the closing laps of the race, Alex seized the opportunity to move into 2nd place which he held till the flag.
Heat 2 was an almost repeat performance giving Alex another 2nd place which would grid him in 2nd place for the first final the next day.
Parc Ferme gates opened ahead of the first final and the skies looked very very dark, but no rain had as yet fallen.
The driver and mechanic have 20 minutes in parc ferme to make final adjustments to the kart and select their race tyres for the 15 minute final.
All mechanics were holding back to the last possible moment and with only 2 minutes left to go in parc ferme and still no rain, a mad panic ensued to get slick tyres on and pass through the gates to the grid. 2 drivers out of the 29 opted for wet tyres.
As the drivers assembled on the grid, the skies opened and torrential rain fell. Initially officials advised that the race would start on the chosen tyres, but on safety grounds, the decision was made to allow tyres to be changed to wet tyres in 5 minutes.
As this was the only change allowed, it would be interesting to see how karts behaved with a dry set up on a flooded track.
Alex set off from 2nd spot and got into the lead. He commanded this race, setting the fastest lap and took the flag putting him on pole position for the main final.
The sun came out and the weather dramatically changed giving a dry set up for the main final. The opening laps of the final looked like hard work to Alex and unfortunately he got squeezed and dropped many places. However, undeterred, he fought his way back up the grid and with 3 laps to go Alex had got into 3rd place and was setting the fastest lap of the race.
On a mission to reach the two leaders, disaster struck when kart no 21 hit Alex in the rear of the kart, forcing him wide and dropping Alex to finish in 7th place. After a judicial hearing, kart no 21 was deemed with camera evidence to have gained an unfair advantage over Alex and was demoted from his 2nd place finish to 8th.
Unfortunately, it denied Alex a podium finish, but more upsetting was denying Alex valuable points. However it is a long season, with plenty of points left, Alex also still holds a healthy lead over the third place championship contender.
BACK TO NEWS
RACE RESULTS
QUALIFYING -3RD
HEAT 1 - 2ND
HEAT 2 - 2ND
PRE-FINAL - 1ST
FINAL - 6TH
