James Cater went to Donington Park 3rd in the class B championship and 1 point behind Colin Gregory, with another two very fast drivers chasing to take the places away. With rear tyres that should long have been assigned to a skip and a slipping clutch, plus an engine badly in need of a rebuild, it was always going to be a challenge to hold 3rd – but why settle there? We wanted 2nd!
A safe qualifying somewhat appropriately left us on the grid 0.01 seconds behind Colin, and with yet another flying start by James Cater on a very slippery circuit, he used his head and did just enough to finish ahead of Colin to take 3rd in class in Race 1 – but with Andrew Cooper and Jack Wilkinson finishing ahead the gap was reduced for championship points.
Ian Jordan took the overall win, followed by Craig Pollard and championship leader Ben Miloudi – who still needed a few more points to wrap up the title.
Working out the standings for Class B showed James was now 1 point ahead of Colin, but on dropped scores he was actually still 1 point behind going into the final race of the year!
Nailing the start again, James was ahead of Colin and even Andrew at one point, before Colin and Ross Price both passed James after a fluffed gearshift.
The safe plan to hold 3rd in the championship should have come into play as Colin pulled away with Ross, but James couldn’t live with that, digging deep and getting back into the battle with them, finally pulling a slight gap ahead on the last lap to take an ecstatic 3rd in class to give him 2nd in the championship!
Sadly, the celebrations ended with a stewards enquiry with an unintentional and irrelevant overtake under a yellow flag in the early laps. The officials chose to apply an overly harsh and unfair penalty even after an appeal which dropped us down the order.
A sad way to tarnish a brilliant race, but we’re not letting the decision take it away – we went in to take 2nd in the championship and whatever the history books will say, we know we did it!
Well done to Jamie Harrison for winning the B Class championship, taking it easy as he only needed a single point from the weekend to wrap it up.
In the official race results Graham Gant took the overall win, with Adam Macaulay’s 2nd a great charge but not enough to stop Ben Miloudi taking the championship win for 2017. Martin Farmer took the final podium spot. In Class B Jack Wilkinson and Andrew Cooper took the top spots again, and Ross Price gets 3rd after my penalty.
Massive thanks to everyone who’s helped out through the year, and to all the drivers and crews who make Formula Vee so wonderful, to the marshals and the photographers – and of course to sponsors JooVuu and Primrose Hospice and to Bromsgrove Standard for their exposure.
We still appreciate every single day how privileged we are to be able to race amongst such talent – huge thank you to you all!
Racing Team Vee 