Roadsports Legend Short makes Roadsports debut and takes victory Written by Joshua Barrett The fourth race of the new Roadsports series took place at Rockingham around the ‘ISS’ layout. After planning to make his 750MC return at the snowed off Donington Park round ex-Le Mans racer turned up to Rockingham with his Toyota GT86, he also was showing off his Mosler in the garage! Qualifying Short made the most of a lack of Class A machinery to put his Class B Toyota on pole position by 1.4 seconds. Regular CSCC runners James Broad and Mark Lloyd Jones brought their VW Corrado VR6 to Roadsports for the first time and would line up alongside Short. Andy Hancock and Gavin Spencer (Honda CRX) took third overall in Qualifying and pole in Class C, while Nick Leston was the lone Class A car in his Porsche 911. Race Short made an appalling start where he dropped into the second half of the pack as the cars headed around oval ‘Turn 1’ for the first time which allowed Broad to put a gap between himself and the rest of the pack. Short, who finished fourth overall at Le Mans in 2007, fought his way back into second at the completion of the first lap but wasn’t able to catch Broad in the first stint. A battle between David Gardner (Ginetta G27), Michael Watson (Lotus Elise) and Hancock was the talking point throughout the first part of the race as the three of them battled; eventually Gardner worked his way to the front and pulled away. Another battle in the first stint of the race was for sixth position and was between Gary Hufford (Mazda MX5) and Paul Armitage (Honda Integra). After the pit stop period Lloyd Jones led the way and was faced with the task of holding off Rollecentre legend, Short. He managed to do so for a number of laps before finally the Toyota made its way into the lead on the fifteenth lap of the race. Short would hold on to the lead of the race and beat the Corrado pairing by eight seconds with the Ginetta of Gardner and Christopher Mills in third. It looked like Gavin Spencer was going to hold on to take victory of Class C in his Honda CRX until he span the car into the gravel at Gracelands with just a few laps remaining. This allowed Gary Hufford to come through and take the class honours to the Toyota MR2 of Jonathan Grimes. Nick Leston came through in ninth to win Class A.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 19:45:20 +0000
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