Sadly the swelling in grid numbers seen at Shenington was not repeated this time with Scott Allen, Katsuhisha Ikuta and an exam-bound Dan Rodde all missing from the fray although the field was boosted by the addition of John Church making his seasonal debut.
Polesitter Nigel Moore made a tardy getaway in heat one as James Mudd slipped through from the second row to take the lead. Mudd lasted until lap three before Daniel Borton deposed him. Borton held onto the lead until lap 10 of 14 when Tom Hibbert out braked him going into the final corner with Frank Wrathall following suite two laps later.
Hibbert took the chequered flag just five hundredths of a second ahead of Wrathall with Borton agonisingly close in third. Jack Hawksworth finished fourth, just half a second behind Hibbert with Moore recovering to fifth and Mudd slipping back to tenth.
With all eleven runners separated by less than nine seconds at the finish of heat one, expectations were high for the second race and the spectators weren’t disappointed even if actual position changes were few and far between.
From pole position Hawksworth led from start to finish with second place starter Raymie Eastwood clinging on manfully until Wrathall got through on lap 12. Hibbert came out best in a scrap with Moore to take third while Borton could only manage sixth on this occasion as the gap between first and tenth place came down to just seven seconds.
Heat three saw fireworks as poleman Nik Goodfellow found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time on lap four and slipped from first to ninth in one fell swoop. Second place starter Jake Rosenzweig also fell back at the same time to allow Wrathall a relatively easy path to victory. Hawksworth made good progress from the fifth row of the grid to take second with Moore getting the better of Church for third. Goodfellow’s race didn’t get any better after another late race incident sidelined him for the rest of the meeting while Hibbert too had problems and had to retire.
