Hankey leaves rivals in a spin as Meadows takes first win

Hankey took race one when Sam Tordoff spun out

Euan Hankey took his second win of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB this season, while the series saw a new winner in the form of Michael Meadows on Sunday at Donington Park. 

The weekend was one that showed just how tight this year’s championship is set to be after a suprise qualifying session saw Lithuanian driver Jonas Gelzinis take the pole position ahead of Sam Tordoff who was impressive second in the Saturday timed session.

The opening race on Sunday started brilliantly for Tordoff also when he surged into the lead of the race ahead of the fast-starting Hankey to lead the early phase of the race. Gelzinis had a difficult start as he was pushed down from first to third place in the race, while behind there was drama as the field came through Craner Curves.

Championship leader Stephen Jelley got a sluggish start from sixth on the grid and found himself being challenged by Tim Harvey coming through Craner. As Harvey threw his car up the inside of Jelley at Old Hairpin, he bumped the Parker Racng man off onto the grass and into a spin, Harvey suffering a puncture as the cars limped back to the pits.

Tordoff meanwhile began maintaining his lead en route to what could have been a first win, until the Parker Racing driver lost control of the car at Old Hairpin and spun away the lead of the race, handing the win to Hankey on a plate and going on to finish down in eighth place.

Behind Hankey, the SAS Redline pairing of Meadows and James Sutton completed the first race podium, ahead of rookie Richard Plant and scholarship winner Benji Hetherington in fourth and fifth respectively.

Gelzinis also spun his car out of third place and gifted away the Pro-am1 class lead, the victory in that class being snapped up by Ahmad Al Harthy who collected a sixth place finish overall ahead of Gelzinis.

Race two was a much more calm affair as pole sitter Meadows held the lead into turn one, chased by his team-mate Sutton who made his way up to second place as he drove around Tordoff at Redgate. The two were nose-to-tail as Sutton closed right up to his team-mate in the final laps, but sanity prevailed as he did not make a serious lunge to take the lead from his team-mate by risking contact.

Although Tordoff kept with the rapid pairing for most of the race, he retired at half distance with a mechanical problem.

Hankey was again the benefitiary to grab third ahead of Pro-am1 winner Gelzinis, Stephen Jelley and Tim Harvey, who salavaged a sixth place result after scoring no points with a 17th place finish in race one after the contact with Jelley.

Michael Caine’s tough start to the season went from bad to worse as he started from the back in race one before fighting back to 10th place, while eighth place was all he could manage in race two.

George Brewster’s Brand Hatch dominance of Pro-am2 was ended by Andrew Shelley in race one at Donington, but he hit back strongly in race two when he caught and passed Keith Webster and then Shelley to snatch his third class win out of four.

The big changes in the championship come at the head of the table as the SAS Redline pair of Sutton (70) and Meadows (66) now lead the way, with Hankey now third on 61 points.

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