Ashley Sutton stars again, finishing second ahead of Harrison Scott, who leads the championship at the half-way stage
A cool, calm and collected James Abbott secured victory in front of the ITV4 live cameras Sunday afternoon at Croft, the 20-year-old from Lincolnshire taking control at the start of Round 15 of the Dunlop MSA Formula Ford Championship of Great Britain and holding on all the way to the chequered flag despite heavy pressure in the closing laps from Ashley Sutton.
Abbott’s Radical Motorsport EcoBoost Mygale crossed the finish line a tenth of a second ahead of the Jamun Racing machine of Round 14 victor Sutton; it was James’s second win of the season and his first achieved other than from pole position in a reverse-grid race. Harrison Scott placed third to complete a hat-trick of Croft podium finishes; the Essex youngster leaves North Yorkshire with a nine-point championship lead over Jayde Kruger.
Abbott’s decisive move came as the red lights extinguished – he anticipated the start perfectly from second on the grid to overhaul slower-starting pole man Scott on the run down to Clervaux. By the lap’s end James was a third of a second ahead, which was as close as anyone would get until the 15th and final lap. Scott gave valiant chase but had first to defend his second place from the attentions of Abbott’s Radical team-mate Juan Rosso, and then fend off Sutton. Ashley gained a place on the opening lap and was then bottled up behind Jayde Kruger’s JTR Mygale for four laps, until he dived down the inside of the South African at the Hairpin.
In the scramble to pass, Sutton’s front wing suffered a bump and started to flap. The damage did not appear to both him, for two laps later he passed Rosso around the outside at Clervaux and then went on to narrow the gap between himself and second-placed Scott from 1.8 seconds to nothing within three laps. He surprised a mirror-less Harrison by seizing the position from him on the inside as they rounded Sunny In on lap 11.
By this stage and with four laps to run, Abbott was 1.5s in front. Sutton reduced that lead to half a second going into the final lap: it was just enough of a gap to allow Abbott to make a slight error, locking up into the Complex, and get away with it. James was relieved to see the flag: “It’s fair to say I felt under a bit of pressure! I knew I could get a bit of a cushion between myself and Harrison but then I was watching my mirrors for the red car… I think both Ashley and I made mistakes on the last lap. I had a little lock-up and then I think he did also. It was all a bit too close. It feels good to have won without the benefit of a reverse-grid pole.”
Added Sutton: “Another lap and I could have won it. In fact, one more corner and I could have… I just ran out of time.” Ashley’s second place overall was accompanied by a third Scholarship class win of the Croft weekend.
Scott was pleased with his points, if disappointed by his speed: “We don’t really have the pace at the moment, so a win and two podiums is really the best I could have hoped for from the weekend. It also means that I am leaving a race weekend with the championship lead for the first time, so that’s a nice feeling. Ashley’s pass was a bit of surprise to me because my mirror was pointing down at the track, so I had no idea he was coming until he was alongside me. We touched but fortunately there was no damage.”
Rosso battled over fourth place with Kruger for the duration and secured the position comfortably thanks to a five-second penalty handed to the South African for exceeding track limits. “It was a hard race,” said Juan. “I am pleased with the points for fourth and to be ahead of Jayde, but I made some mistakes and I did not have the pace to do better.”
Kruger came home just head of his JTR team-mate Max Marshall, who was sixth, with Connor Mills bouncing back from his Saturday crash – after many hours of repair work by his Meridian crew – to take seventh, and second in the Scholarship class, just ahead of Ricky Collard.
Chris Mealin was tagged into a spin at the Hairpin on lap three and recovered well to finish ninth. Connor Jupp, whose Meridian Mygale had required even more repair work than Mills’s car, survived an early scare when his fire extinguisher went off and he pitted as a precaution, to place 10th ahead of the SWB Sinter of Greg Holloway and Louise Richardson’s Mygale, which was another pit visitor with gear selection problems.
