Howard/Adam survive penalty scare to win second race

After taking over from Adam in the mid-race driver changes, Howard had a lead of 12 seconds when he, along with his two closest pursuers Lee Mowle and Liam Griffin, were handed drive-through penalties for completing their stops in less than the minimum allotted time.

Howard nonetheless resumed the race in a comfortable lead, with Steve Tandy’s Ginetta G55 and the BMW Z4 of reigning champion Marco Attard moving up to second and third ahead of Griffin’s Aston Martin and the Ferrari 458 of Gary Eastwood, whose team-mate Adam Carroll led prior to the stops.

Carroll had taken the lead at around one-third distance after passing Adam at Old Hall, but a 15-second success penalty for his race one win served to shuffle the FF Corse car down the order when Eastwood took the helm.

Eastwood then lost a further position on the final lap of the race to Mowle, as Tandy narrowly hung on for second place from Attard and Griffin, who were split by just a tenth of a second at the line.

Phil Keen had been running third behind Carroll and Griffin in the Barwell-run BMW Z4 prior to the stops, but was forced to retire after getting tangled up with the lapped Mercedes SLS of Godfrey Jones.

Osman Yusuf and Gavan Kershaw took victory in the GT4 class, the duo building up a lead of 16 seconds over the Beechdean Aston Martin of Jamie Chadwick and Ross Gunn.