Cadet Heats
For the third round of the BRDC Stars of Tomorrow featuring the MSA British Cadet Championship the series travelled to the Shenington circuit near Banbury where the torrid conditions greeted yet another bumper entry.
No less than 47 Cadets lined up to do battle over the rain-drenched 1018-metre circuit meaning that each driver would participate in three of six heats in total. Sadly Mother Nature had other ideas and only four races were run before the meeting was abandoned meaning that a few unfortunate souls only started one race.
Coming into the weekend all eyes were on Kimbolton winners Brett Wykes and Jake Dennis. Although Wykes led the early season championship thanks to a dominant round two victory, Dennis was now sporting the coveted ‘O’ Plate following his recent triumph at PFI International.
Alexander Albon, second in the points table, had also found a reason to move away from his familiar number and was now running as #2 as opposed to #46 to reflect his status as last year’s championship runner-up and with the majority of the field very familiar with Sheningtons’ flat, fast and generally smooth layout, the class was arguably even more wide open than at Kimbolton.
As the very first race on the programme it was up to the Cadets to sample the track in race conditions before everyone else but despite a few ‘hold your breath’ moments on the first run through Park Bend and Café Corner, all 23 starters made it through unscathed.
With plenty of tentative steps being made, Wykes’ experience immediately stood him in good stead as he marched his way through the field from the outside of the eighth row to take a close fought victory over the tenacious Hazz Truelove. Dennis made decent progress from tenth on the grid to finish third but he crossed the line nearly five seconds behind the front two.
Luke Hughes came within six hundredths of a second of snatching third from Dennis but had to settle for fourth with Steven Handford and the fast starting Abigail Gerry rounding out the top six.
