Donnington Park – Nippon Challenge.
As the MR2 race series would not be racing at Donnington this year, the Nippon Challenge was the ideal way to race at our local circuit.
With a combined grid of Nippon cars and French manufactured cars, this would be a full grid on the National circuit.
Qualifying;
It was warm and dry even though qualifying was at 9am, the track was dry and with a set of new tyres I set about getting the best time possible with 39 cars on track, finding space would be difficult. During the 15 min session my best time was 1.29.6 which put me 2nd in the 1600 class and surprisingly 18th overall, out qualifying some 2 litre Clio’s and Subaru’s.
Race 1 (Nippon cars only)
With a grid of 20 cars I’d be starting from 5th position, once the lights went out and although I had a good start I was quickly overtaken by the quicker cars down the long straight into turn 1, at the end of the first lap I’d dropped to 8th position and by the 3rd lap I was in 9th with fellow MR2 racer Arron Pullan just in front. The remaining 8 laps of the race was spent with Aron and myself swapping positions 2 or 3 times a lap, I managed to keep ahead on the final lap and take the flag first. Finishing in 8th position overall and second in class.
Race 2 (Nippon and Frenchies combined)
Starting from my original qualifying position of 18th on this full grid myself and Arron picked up from where we’d left off earlier in the day in race 1. Swapping positions numerous times each lap unit the end of the race. This time though it was Arron that came out on top taking the flag 1/10th of a second before me. I got the fastest lap of the day in the 1600 class – 1.28.4.
The incar footage for this race is in our ‘Video’ section.
More information on this event will appear soon.
Check back closer to the event date for an update.
Thank you for your interest in 22GT Racing.
