Hancock completes Carrera Cup double

Sam Hancock completed a tremendous weekend double victory by winning round eight of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB at Thruxton yesterday (Sunday 18 May). In a race full of action and drama, Hancock moved through to win after early leader Michael Caine hit trouble, while Tony Gilham took pro-am1 spoils. Caine (Team Parker Racing) got ahead on the opening lap as Tim Bridgman (Team Parker Racing) and Hancock (Jota Sport) disputed ground into the first corner. Once ahead, Caine was able to control the gap to Hancock as Tim Harvey (Red Line Racing) battled ahead of Bridgman and moved in on Hancock. Into Campbell for the eighth lap, Harvey touched the back of Hancock’s car and that had a dramatic effect on the race outcome. Although the contact was slight, it damaged the radiator on Harvey’s car and he immediately backed right off and limped back to the pits. Unfortunately, he was dropping coolant and that made the entry to the chicane especially slippery. First to arrive at the chicane on his ninth lap was Caine and he had a big slide on the coolant. His car pitched up over the kerb and damaged the front splitter in the process, which immediately drastically upset the handling of his car. “It was looking so good,” said Caine after the race. “You couldn’t see the coolant on the track and I just tried to hold the slide.” Hancock was close behind Caine and also had a big slide, but managed to avoid the kerbs while the following cars all slithered through. “I thought we were all going off; it was one of those hairy moments,” said Hancock. Now with an ill-handling car, Caine was powerless to fend off Hancock and started to fall back as Hancock settled into the lead from Bridgman. Up into third came Duncan Tappy (PCGB) after a big battle with Charles Bateman (Team Parker Racing), but Tappy went out four laps from the flag when a tyre deflated and sent him into a spin at Church, which put Bateman into third on his way to a first overall podium finish in the Carrera Cup. Up front, Hancock controlled the pace to the flag for his second win in two days. “Happy is an understatement; racing is all about winning,” said Hancock. Bridgman was a close second and knew that it had been a good result for his title bid. “We didn’t have the pace this weekend, but championships are all about being good on your bad days,” he said. “That was a tough old race,” said Bateman after the best result of his career to date. “It’s all about tyre management here.” Caine salvaged fourth by fending off Phil Quaife (Jota Sport) to the flag, but was desperately frustrated about his weekend. “We’ve been fastest here all weekend and had a fourth and a fifth place,” he said. With Nigel Rice (Red Line Racing) out after an early clash with Quaife, which also dropped Quaife to the tail of the field, it was Gilham (ReDesign Racing) who came through to sixth overall and pro-am1 victory. “I just kept my head down and kept going,” said Gilham after upping his pace throughout the weekend.

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