Formula Ford Rounds 5 and 6 thrill the Donington crowds and the live TV audienceHarrison Scott wins in the wet, Jayde Kruger in the dry as Connor Mills claims a rookie class hat-trick

Harrison Scott mastered the tricky wet conditions of today’s fifth round of the Dunlop MSA Formula Ford Championship at Donington Park to secure his first win of the short season for the Falcon Motorsport team, but the Essex youngster was denied a second win today by mechanical problems. The Donington finale instead fell into the lap of Jayde Kruger, Saturday’s race victor, to give him win number four and the championship lead.

The day’s star driver was 17-year-old rookie Connor Mills, who charged through the field in the wet race to claim second place overall, right on Scott’s tail, in his Meridian Mygale, and who then went on to complete a hat-trick of Scholarship class wins.

Round 5 reportA pre-event downpour brought unpredictability and excitement by the bucket load to Donington Park this morning with Harrison Scott notching up his maiden win of the Dunlop MSA Formula Ford Championship season and Connor Mills stealing the show and the Scholarship class honours with an impressive drive to second place.Though the rain had ceased by the time the lights flashed to start Round 5, Dunlop’s grooved wet-weather tyre was the obligatory choice. Given the previously dry conditions on Thursday and Saturday at Donington, chassis set-up was a less clear-cut option and several competitors found their cars a handful.By dint of his sixth-place finish yesterday, JTR’s Max Marshall started the reverse-grid race from the pole but the Leicestershire driver couldn’t convert the advantage on his home track. Juan Rosso, who started second, took the lead through Redgate in his Radical Mygale and quickly built a sizeable lead.After a slow start from P4, Scott moved into third place on the second lap as Jayde Kruger erred and the South African slipped behind both Harrison and James Abbott. Then two laps later, through the Craner curves, Scott got the better of a long fight with Marshall to move up to second. By the end of lap five Rosso’s lead over Scott was 4.0s but within a further lap the Argentinian’s advantage had been halved and Harrison was zeroing in on the leader. Juan, struggling for grip, had to give way to the inevitable on the eighth lap and cede top spot to Harrison.“The conditions changed a lot during the race,” said Juan. “It dried out a lot and I was going slower and slower and slower. It was my fault: I couldn’t find the braking points and my cornering speed went down and down…”But the victory battle was not yet settled: Mills, who started seventh, was a man on a mission and was revelling in the slippery conditions at the wheel of his Meridian Mygale. He made the top five by lap five and picked off both Abbott and Marshall on the next lap to assume third. Within five laps Connor had caught and passed Rosso and was beginning to look a threat for the lead. Had the race lasted a couple more laps the outcome might have been different, but Scott had enough left in reserve to put in the fastest lap of the race on his penultimate tour and take his first win of 2014 by a 4.5s margin.“I had a bad start, getting boxed in a bit at the first corner, but then I was able to push, the car felt good and I was able to pick them off one by one,” said Harrison. “The track was really greasy and getting worse as the race went on, but things couldn’t have been much better for me really.”“I loved the conditions,” said Mills. “The whole weekend I’ve been saying that I wanted it to rain, and I got my wish. The car was perfect and it couldn’t have gone better. If I had started a bit further up the grid then maybe I could have challenged for the win.”A disappointed Rosso held on in front of his Radical team-mate Abbott for third and his second podium visit of the season, with Sam Brabham salvaging fifth. Sam had found the conditions particularly tricky – he spun on his out lap on the way to the grid. “We just had the wrong set-up,” he said. “We thought it would be a lot drier out there than it turned out, and that cost us. Fifth is an OK result in the circumstances.”Brabham’s JTR team-mates Kruger and Marshall suffered equally badly, finishing sixth and seventh respectively. Mills’s team-mate Bobby Thompson made it a Meridian 1-2 in the Scholarship class thanks to his eighth-place finish. Falcon men Ricky Collard and Chris Mealin both suffered gearbox issues and struggled home ninth and 10th, ahead of James Webb (SWB), Ovie Iroro (Richardson Racing) and Greg Holloway (SWB).