A trio of exciting evo Caterham Eurocup races at Hockenheim in Germany this weekend [April 13/14] brought an early CSR Masters championship lead for old hands Clive Richards and Richard Hay, plus a race victory for 18-year-old newcomer Ed Morris - the championship's youngest ever winner.
Though there was a new-for-'07 format of two 30-minute sprint races plus a one-hour feature race, the series had a more than familiar look as the Colards Motorsport-prepared car of Hay and Richards, the 2005 and '06 runners-up, went into battle once more against the Hyperion/Acre Jean car, this season in the hands of Morris and Oliver Bull.
It was the veterans who got the better of things in qualifying, Richards snatching the pole for his race by a tenth from Kurt Hoffmann, while Hay edged Morris by four-hundredths.
Sprint race one brought Richards up against Bull, and predictably they quickly broke away from the pack to pursue a private battle for race victory. They exchanged the lead on a dozen occasions at least but it was Richards who pinched it for good at the hairpin on the final lap, leading his rival across the line by three-tenths.
"Everything went according to plan," said Clive. "I pressed Olly hard to see where he could respond and then it was just a question of making sure I was right behind him into the last lap."
Italy's Michele Tommasi came back from sixth on the opening lap to emerge triumphant in a long battle for third with Malcolm Johnstone and Jamie Constable. Johnstone was a tenth behind at the flag but Constable finished seventh after overcooking it in the final stages when the trio came upon some backmarkers. Sarah Reader and Phillipe Evrard placed fifth and sixth. There was disappointment for the German contenders: Hoffmann went off on lap two after a brush with Johnstone while newcomer Thomas Klein hobbled home eighth in an overheating car.
![Ed Morris and Oliver Bull [Pic credit: Patrick Holzer]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/310660.jpg)
