In the Driver’s standings, Adam Smalley leads by six-points, Croft race winner Josh Rattican strengthened his third position while Tom Emson’s first non-finish of the season caused him to drop a place to fifth.
Starting the Croft weekend (18-19 Sep) with a 12pt advantage in the series, Smalley claimed his fifth front row start from six qualifying sessions for Race 1. Adam shadowed title rival Tom Hibbert throughout the 10-lap race on Saturday – the opening four laps behind the Safety Car – to record second place, just 0.472secs behind the winner.
Adam appeared to have gained his revenge in Sunday’s opening race when he executed a great move for the lead at the final corner on the last lap. Astonishingly, Hibbert having congratulated Smalley on “live” TV immediately after the race despite being demoted to second place and confirmed that he accepted the overtake, officials later penalised Adam with a 0.5secs penalty dropping Smalley to second. In the final race, Smalley took a solid third to consolidate his series lead – his 12th podium of the season from 17 races.
Rattican overcame some minor issues in quali and started Race 1 from fourth but a great overtake at mid-distance earned Josh, who also set the race’s fastest lap, third place – a position he repeated in Race 2 from lights to chequered flag. In Race 3 Rattican, on new tyres, snatched the lead starting the penultimate lap after a great move at the hairpin to score his second win of the season and record his 11th podium of the year.
An electronic glitch shut down Tom Emson’s engine in Race 1, dropping him from seventh to 16th in Race 1 but Tom scythed his way up from a 12th place grid spot to a sixth place classification in Race 2 after a series of brilliant overtakes. In the final race, Emson diced for seventh but a part failure at mid-distance resulted in a damaged car and a pit-lane retirement.
Eddie Ives, Team Owner & Manager
“We’ll go to Donington Park for the last but one GT4 event of the season in a confident frame of mind after another pretty successful weekend overall. Elite leads the Teams while Adam heads to Driver’s championship – but it’s very close and there’s everything to play for at the final two GT4 events.
“Adam has now recorded 12 podiums and was very unlucky not to get his eighth win of the season, officials surprisingly deciding his move at the hairpin was not fair. Josh had one of his best weekends of the season, scoring his second win of the year and notching up his 11th podium. Conversely, Tom was very unlucky at Croft and could have easily come away with three, top-six finishes.”
