2 weeks after Chris Kerswell wrapped up the Championship at Wrexham, the national series ventured to Stafford for the 11th and 12th round of the now closing season. Chris may have already secured the title, but the fight for second place in the Championship is still very much on. Currently Christopher Delves holds second place behind his teammate, but drivers such as Jonathan Dronfield and Dewi Jones have yet to score points in all the counting rounds and so still have a very real shot at it themselves.

The weekend’s weather didn’t look promising, but on arrival on Saturday the track was dry with damp patches allowing those arriving early at the track a chance to get a little dry running in. Sure enough though the weather changed for the worse, and the track became very wet creating the difficult kind of conditions that all racers dread! Some drivers stayed to practice, but the majority opted not to, saving their equipment for race day.

Qualifying
The first two rounds of qualifying saw running on a very greasy and damp, but never the less, drying track. Hopes of a dry track were dashed though by a heavy downpour just before the first heat in the third round of qualifying. The third round was the fastest round of the day, and in effect gave the drivers just one round in which to qualify. Chris Kerswell had TQ in the first two rounds and would maintain his dominance of the class and take TQ in the last round as well. Jonathan Dronfield put in an impressive run to put his Schumacher second on the grid followed by Corally driver Steve Lissamore. The last round caught a few people out though. Christopher Delves made a few mistakes, which cost him position on the grid. Mark Musgrove and Daniel Fallows also had problems demoting them into the B final and taking crucial points away from their championship challenges. The man that made the most of the wet weather though was Ian Southorn, who took FTD early on in the third round after a brilliant drive in very tricky conditions making his first national A final. Well-done Ian.

Leg 1
Off the line Chris Kerswell lead from Jonathan Dronfield, leaving the rest of the field to fight it out. And with plenty of door rubbing going on that’s exactly what was happening. After the first lap though things calmed down and the racing started. Up front Chris Kerswell was closely followed by Jonathan Dronfield, who though was under enormous pressure from the rest of the Corally team.
There was some very close racing in tricky conditions between the five drivers in the top slots with Delves, Kerswell, Lissamore and Dronfield all had the lead at some point. But after Christopher finished his race by hitting a track marker Jonathan took up the lead and just never looked back. This left teammates Steve Lissamore and Chris Kerswell fighting for second. Steve defended his position very well but Chris found his way past and started to chase down Jonathan who had built up a 4 second lead by this time. Chris duly arrived on the leader’s rear bumper and started to put on the pressure, but Jonathan held his nerve, and his place, and took the first leg win from Chris. Steve Lissamore came home in third followed by teammate Richard Thorpe in fourth.

Leg 2
Once again the first corner would see it’s fair share of action, Chris Kerswell coming of worse this time and finding himself demoted to the back of the pack. This meant that Jonathan had inherited the lead of the race, followed closely by Steve and Christopher (again he was under pressure from the Corally Team). Steve made a mistake allowing Christopher into second where he set about chasing hard to make up the gap between himself and Jonathan. Another mistake from Jonathan though sent him crashing down the order, thus promoting Christopher into first place. Man on the move was Adam Hughes, up from ninth on the grid and now sitting in second place and gaining fast on the first place man. Chris Kerswell and Jonathan Dronfield meanwhile were fighting their way back up the field, with Chris setting some impressively fast laps for these conditions. With the arrival of the four minute mark though Christopher was still in the lead, but Adam had closed the gap. Christopher made a mistake allowing Adam to get even closer and in a position to take the lead, but a coming together would settle things with Adam remaining in second. Christopher took the win at the end of the five minutes from Adam. Jonathan had managed to recover third position, with which he took the overall win.