SAM GORNALL EXTENDS ADVANTAGE WITH RACE THREE WIN

Sam Gornall will take an extended lead into the Vertu MINI CHALLENGE Trophy season finale at Brands Hatch in November after securing victory in the final race of the weekend at Silverstone.

The championship leader started the race from the second row of the grid with Gabe Fairbrother and Rhys Hurd sharing the front row, with Hurd jumping into the lead at the start as Fairbrother found himself shuffled down the pack on the opening tour.

Gornall was amongst those to get ahead of Fairbrother into second spot with the top two able to break away from the battle for third behind over the opening two laps.

Hurd would remain out front to the third lap when Gornall got ahead at Luffield, with Hurd’s gamble on wet tyres on a drying circuit ultimately failing as he started to slide down the pack.

Luca Marinoni Osborne moved ahead of Hurd on lap six but was soon demoted back to third behind team-mate Olivier Algieri at Becketts as the rookie moved ahead on lap eight and from that point on, the leading three drivers would remain unchanged as Gornall took the win by more than six seconds.

Westbourne Motorsport ultimately locked out the top four spots on the results sheet as Harry Hickton fought his way up into fourth spot to retain second in the standings, with Alex Solley and James Black closed behind.

Whilst Gornall’s lead at the front was the second largest seen this season, the pack behind were covered by little more than two seconds and Fairbrother would have been close behind had he not been hit with a five second penalty for exceeding track limits.

A sideways moment at Luffield early on didn’t help the pole man but he didn’t lose position despite the penalty given the gap he had been able to build over Alex Keens in eighth.

Keens himself would spend much of the race battling with Leo Purches, who scored maximum points in the Rookie Cup ahead of the current points leader Ronnie Smith in tenth.

Of note, Ashley Gregory celebrated her birthday with a fine run through the field from the back to take eleventh place, with top Director honour going to Ben Taylor after a race to forget for points leader Paul Manning – who ran at the back of the pack with his car sounding far from well.

After the incident that caused race two to be halted, Joshua Wilby and Harvey Riby both missed the weekend finale, with Riby having been checked over in hospital and released with concussion and mild soft tissue damage.