After the frantic nature of the opening Super Mighty Mini race, the pace was about to be seriously upped as the Castle Combe Sports racing car series returned after missing the last meeting. The series boasted it’s biggest entry of the year for this new series, with some old faces returning to spice up the racing also.

The conditions were truly terrible as these very quick sports racing cars took to the track for their formation lap. This itself proved a highly confusing moment as everyone thought they would only do one formation lap, although after aborted starts and a re-setting of the 20 minute race clock, the cars finally took the green flag after 3 formation laps. From the rolling start it was pole man Andy Crockett who rocketed into the lead whilst second man Norman Lackford dropped down after taking the start cautiously.

With the first four evenly spaced after 2 laps the only change to the status quo was a very quick returning Darcy Smith who took the lead from Crockett in his Radical SR4 at Old Paddock. Behind the first two the move of the race came from Chris Vinall who made a very late lunge from several car length’s back to claim 3rd at Tower on lap 4 in a move that could have easily gone wrong.

Darcy Smith subsequently opened a lead of several seconds over the rest by lap 5, by lap 9 the cars have thinned out slightly as retirements took hold because of the dreadful conditions and by the final tour on lap 14 Smith had opened his lead to 8 seconds to claim a far from easy victory. Andy Crockett came home a lonely 2nd whilst Chris Vinall completed the podium.

Circuit stalwart and local favourite Norman Lackford came home 4th from a lapped Steven Bracegirdle in his unusual Nemisis RWE98 GT and Robert Gillman who completed the top 6. The race was stunted by the weather which undoubtedly ruined the chances of a great race for this new for 2014 series, with the spectators being robbed of an epic duel between the “big banger” cars of Mike Roberts in his awesome Lola B2K/40 Le Mans spec car and local favourite Simon Tilling who returned with his new Ligier JS49T. These two in the dry would have been an incredibly race for the spectators although sadly the weather deprived everyone of this privilege.

For more information on this growing series please visit – http://www.ccracingclub.co.uk/championships/sports-racing-series/