Ashton and McDonagh win at Round 4 of the BRCA 1:12 Nationals

 

Round 4 of the 2013/14 1/12th BRCA National Series saw a full entry of 110 drivers return to the Oakley Centre at Crewe, a venue which has been hosting 1/12th nationals on and off for the last 20 years. The drivers were presented with a very open and fast track layout which had been successfully trialled at the Autosports show the previous weekend.

In the ever popular GT12 class, round 1 saw a number of drivers being caught out by some bumps in the carpet, which saw Stephen Lander head the timesheets from Andrew Carter, with Jamie McDonagh in 3rd. Round 2 saw Jamie McDonagh go fastest with Andrew Carter remaining in 2nd with David Hall up to 3rd place. Improvements for both Jamie and Andrew in round 3 saw them remain 1st and 2nd with Matt Lax moving up to 3rd. These 3 drivers all separated by less than a second. The final round of qualifying saw Jamie take TQ with Andrew half a second behind in 2nd place, Sam Clifton in 3rd, David Hall 4th and Marcus Askell 5th. The overall qualifying saw 9 Supastox in the A final with the first 9 drivers separated by only 6 seconds going to show how close the racing is in the GT12 class.

The final saw Jamie and Andrew both get away cleanly with incidents further down the meaning they started to open up a comfortable lead over the chasing pack. Andrew continued to chase Jamie and was never further than a second behind but could not get close enough to try to pass. At the 4 minute mark Marcus Askell broke away from the chasing back and started to challenge Andrew for 2nd place. This gave Jamie the opportunity to maintain a comfortable lead to take a buzzer to buzzer victory, with Andrew Carter taking a superb 2nd place despite a last corner attempt to pass from Marcus Askell.
 
  
 
Round 1 on Sunday saw Marcus Askell head the time sheets, putting in the first 22 laps of the weekend. Schumacher’s own Chris Ashton was in 2nd place also on 22 laps, a change in pre-race preparation have the desired effect, with Alex Thurston in 3rd. Round 2 saw improvements for both Marcus and Chris with less than half a second separating them, with Alex remaining in 3rd. In round 3 none of the top 3 were able to improve on their times so the order remained the same. The final round of qualifying saw Chris Ashton snatch TQ by 0.16 of a second from Marcus with Karl Dransfield putting in a 22 lapper to qualify 3rd. Jamie McDonagh was fastest of the 21 lappers in 4th with Alex Thurston in 5th and Sam Clifton 6th. These 3 separated by only a tenth of a second.

The final saw Chris Ashton get away cleanly but a coming together between Marcus Askell and Karl Dransfield allowed Alex Thurston up to 2nd place from 5th on the grid followed by Sam Clifton, Jamie McDonagh and Andrew Carter. A mistake from Sam going through the hairpin allowed Jamie up to 3rd place and start to challenge Alex for 2nd. Whilst these battles were going on Chris Ashton was able to stretch out a comfortable lead. A slight error from Alex allowed Jamie to squeeze by to 2nd place and try to catch Chris. Chris was in cruise mode though and coasted home to take the win from Jamie with Alex Thurston getting a thoroughly deserved 3rd place.
 
 
A big thank you to the Crewe model car club for putting on an enjoyable and extremely well organised meeting. Round 5 will see the series head to Milton Keynes Shopping Centre which if this meeting was anything to go by, will be a great advertisement for the sport. 

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