Caterham Roadsport Title Race is Hotting Up

18 August 2005

The Motorsport News Caterham Roadsport Challenge is shaping up for a grandstand finish to a super-competitive season with the title fights for both the Roadsport Inter and Roadsport B classes set to go down to the wire.

Just four races remain in which to settle matters - two at Donington Park in a month's time and the closing events at October's Brands Hatch Formula Ford Festival.

It was at Brands Hatch last weekend (13/14 Aug) that the latest chapter in the 2005 Roadsport story unfolded, with a dramatic no-score for Inter class leader Guy Harrington as Andrew Beaumont took his first race victory and Bill Addison snatched his second Inters win of the year. In Roadsport B, Patrick Gormley and Jeremy Ellis shared the honours.

The dramas which befell 18-year-old Harrington - both his Brands races came to a premature end in the Druids hairpin gravel trap - cost him the Inter class championship lead which he's held since the opening rounds at Oulton Park in March.

The new Inters leader is Nick Potter, who though yet to win a race has finished in the top six in all but one round. Potter claimed fourth place in the first Brands race, behind Addison and Beaumont, who duelled for victory throughout, and Neil Fletcher.

It was Beaumont's turn for victory in Sunday's Inter race, the Surrey racer making the best of a race interrupted by a red flag following a pit-wall crash for Rob Winrow. Less than a second covered the top four - Beaumont, Addison, Mike Richards and Charles Bateman - at the flag, with Potter fifth. Fletcher was 10th after losing time with a damaged nosecone.

In Roadsport B, Ellis appears to enjoy a 23-point advantage over Patrick Gormley, but when both drivers discard their two worst scores - as they will have to come season's end - only five points separates five-time race winner Ellis from four-race victor Gormley.

Saturday's Brands Hatch Roadsport B opener was blighted by streaming wet weather which resulted in spins galore, including a race-ending collision between Kevin Dodd and Chris Fryar. Gormley was ahead when it mattered, just before the red flags came out, with Ellis just four-hundredths behind and Luke Dimsdale third from Henry Fletcher and Darren Faraway.

Red flags flew again in the second Roadsport B race, and the results declared this time after just seven laps when Paul Sweeney and Simon Fielding spun into the Paddock Hill Bend gravel trap. Ellis took advantage of a relatively poor getaway by Gormley to take an early lead; he was a nose ahead of Fletcher at the end, with less than a second spanning the top four; Gormley was third, Dimsdale fourth and Faraway sixth.

See series calendars for all 2005 Caterham Championships

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