Frank Wrathall’s near-seamless showing throughout the heats secured him pole position for Sunday’s Super ICC final, and based on his performance up to that point, it would have been a brave man to have bet against him.
Fellow heat winner Tom Hibbert and Daniel Borton joined the Preston ace on the front row, with Jake Rosenzweig and Nigel Moore on row two and Jack Hawksworth, Saturday final winner James Mudd and Dan Rodde filling out row three.
As the lights went out, the question on everyone’s lips was: could
anybody live with Wrathall? Hibbert certainly wanted to have a go, propelling himself into the lead ahead of the pole-sitter, Borton, Moore, Mudd, Rosenzweig and Hawksworth.
The closest battle initially was that over fourth place, and Mudd was the first to lose out, dropping behind Rosenzweig and Hawksworth. Moving in tandem, the duo’s next victim was erstwhile third-placed man Borton, shuffled back to the outer fringes of the top six as Rosenzweig and Hawksworth settled into fourth and fifth.
With Hibbert using all his nous to stave off Wrathall, Rosenzweig began to close in on Moore’s third place in the leaders’ wake. Borton was clearly not keen to give up without a fight either, pushing Hawksworth sideways through the opening complex of turns on lap five, but the Bradford ace demonstrated some spectacular kart control to retain his position.
A little further up the road, Rosenzweig moved past Moore into third and, more significantly still, Wrathall did the same to Hibbert for the lead, but neither battle was over yet. With the race entering its latter stages, there were two two-way tussles at the front, followed by a train comprising Hawksworth, Borton, Nik Goodfellow, Raymie Eastwood, Rodde and Mudd squabbling over fifth.
