Rob Garofall & Richard Bernans jump to the top of the Rolex 24 At Daytona Driver Challenge presented by Sunoco table after a dramatic 4 hour SPEED race at Anglesey
Anglesey in North West of Wales is a diamond of a track with the most beautiful scenery of all UK tracks - if you like the sea that is. And boy did the sea throw some spanners in the works for the teams. Gale force winds combined with short showers (no need for rain tyres) made it very difficult for the drivers as they dramatically changed the balance of the CN sports prototypes. In addition front and rear race panels were torn off some of the cars, but luckily no- one was injured. The team to beat all weekend was Counter Solutions with their Juno SSE CN09 driven by the experienced Rob Garofall and Richard Bernans, posting unofficial fastest times in Friday free practice. However, the ultra quick Ben Clucas stole the show in qualifying setting a blistering pole position time 1.376 seconds faster than second placed Simon Dolan and Sam Hancock, earning Ben 20 vital points for the Driver Challenge. The RLR Motorsport team headed by Barry Gates had brought in the experienced Phil Bennett (ex-BTCC etc racer) to partner Rachid Bouzouba in the Ligier JS49, but found it hard to combat an over-steering issue.
The race pace was fierce and provided great excitement throughout. Rob Garofall and Richard Bernans, however, looked comfortable in the lead winning with 1 lap to spare over second placed Nick Adcock and Massimo Vignali in their Ligier JS49, followed by Sarah Reader and Graham Fennymore in their TFL Motorsport run Juno SSE09 just 14.7 seconds ahead of Phil Bennett and Rachid Bouzouba in 4th. Fastest lap went to the flying Ben Clucas earning him another 20 points for his efforts.
As the Driver Challenge leader board is calculated on average scores it was expected that SPEED drivers would be leading the Rolex 24 At Daytona Driver Challenge presented by Sunoco after their first race of the season. Previous leader Derek Johnston is trailing Rob Garofall and Richard Bernans with an average of 93.33 points, but bear in mind that Derek in the Radical UK Cup has done three races and 4th place Daniel Ricciardo four. Here are the full standings as at May 17th.
The Driver Challenge will now have a weekend off until 29th-31st of May when SPEED heads to Spa (3 hour race) and British F3 and British GT head to Rockingham - expect the leader board to change again after that weekend.
