Radical UK Champion, Derek Johnston,  jumps ahead of British F3 Champion, Daniel Ricciardo as he makes his final effort to win the Rolex 24 At Daytona Driver Challenge presented by Sunoco with two decisive wins at Snetterton

Last week British F3 driver Daniel Ricciardo completed his bid to win the Rolex 24 At Daytona Driver Challenge presented by Sunoco with a successful weekend at Brand Hatch when he jumped to second in the Challenge standings.

This weekend the attention switched to 47 year old Derek Johnston, who is the leading Radical UK Cup driver and had two 50-minute races at Snetterton, sharing the car with Stuart Moseley. Derek has been a leading contender for the Challenge throughout the season.

He qualified second fastest, but taking the first stint in race one on Saturday he took the lead on lap 7 and held it comfortably until he handed the car over to Stuart on lap 22 with a 12 second lead. When everyone had completed their stops, car #1 was back in the lead and Stuart kept it there, having maintained the margin. This win confirmed Derek as the outright winner of the Radical UK Cup for the second year in succession.

This meant that on Sunday all attention was focused on his bid to carry off the Rolex 24 At Daytona Driver Challenge presented by Sunoco. Starting from pole position as a result of Saturday’s win, Derek took the led immediately and pulled away consistently. By the time he stopped to hand the car over to Stuart Moseley he had an advantage of 20 seconds, so really all Stuart had to do was bring the car home, but it was going so well and he was enjoying himself so much that he set the fastest lap of the race on lap 30, which robbed Derek of a possible 20 points!

Despite this tactical oversight, the pair had performed impeccably. Their consistency was such that the overall times for the two races were less than a second apart – 50m 44.970s for race 1 and 50m 44.095s for race 2.

The outcome is that Derek has now jumped into 2nd place in the average points standing for the Rolex 24 At Daytona Driver Challenge presented by Sunoco. British F3 ace, Daniel Ricciardo has been knocked back to 3rd on 75.50 average points per race (AVPR) and the leading British GT driver, Allan Simonsen, is 4th on 72.14 AVPR.

Still leading the way is SPEED Series driver, Rob Garofall, on 78.75 AVPR and everything now depends on how well he does in the final race of the series at Silverstone on October 10th. This is a 3-hour race and as the points are calculated on an average basis there are numerous possibilities. In simple terms, Rob will win the Rolex 24 At Daytona Driver Challenge presented by Sunoco if he finishes 2nd; or 3rd with fastest lap; or 4th with pole position and fastest lap. On the other hand, if he were to score no points all, his average score would drop to 63 points and Derek Johnston would be the clear winner, but if Rob were to secure pole position, win the race and set fastest lap, then his average would rocket to 91 points. There really is everything to play for.

Points are awarded to the first 10 finishers in each race in accordance with the scale below. In addition, the driver securing pole position secures an extra 20 points as does the one setting the fastest lap in the race. This means that the maximum score a driver can record in one race is 140 points, but then that has to be averaged out.

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th100pts 75pts 55pts 40pts 30pts 25pts 20pts 15pts  10pts 5pts