The second race of the day was the WOSP New Millennium and Verum Builders Open series. CSCC welcomes Luke Wos’ performance tuning business, which has taken the title sponsorship role for the New Millennium category, catering for post-2000 production cars and their racing variants, as well as Rob Hardys Wiltshire-based Verum Builders company continued support of the Open series, which provides a home for all production saloon, hatchback, sports & GT cars of any age, as well as some kit cars.
In contrast to race 1 which focused on the Lotus 7-inspired design, this combination attracted 33 entrants to take to qualifying, of which 30 made it to the grid. No less than 10 marques were represented through the field, with neither the New Millennium nor Open series holding dominion over the other, as the first three rows had one representative of each category.
A familiar face secured pole position, that of bath-based dentist Dominic Malone in his BMW M3 E90, previously raced by Sir Andy Priaulx MBE. Right next to him was the lead Open Series car of Dave Harvey in his moon buggy-esque Lotus 340R, reportedly the only one racing in the UK. Throughout the grid were some amazing driving talent, along with debutants, such as James Collins who was taking part in his first-ever race, partnered up with racing veteran Nigel Greensall in a BMW M3 E46.
With Malone & Harvey leading to the field to the green light for the first 40-minute race of the year, the various roars and screams of the hugely varied engine notes kicked in and the race began. As the lights went out, so did Malone’s momentum as Harvey stole the lead through Copse. Behind them was a superb start from Bosnian-born Dylan Popovic in his Chevrolet-powered Ginetta G50, demoting Malone to 3rd. It wasn’t long though before the race was neutralised, this time by a code 60, caused by Warren Tattersall who had buried his Seat Leon TCR into the gravel trap at Copse. He was recovered by the ever-hardworking marshalls and was allowed to continue, but a lap down from the rest of the field.
As the code 60 concluded, curiously Harvey was nearly a minute ahead of Popovic, who in turn was about 12 seconds ahead of Malone, after which point there was a flood of competitors, a 5-way BMW battle going on for 4th, a 3-way fight for 9th that was led by the first non-BMW outside of the podium contenders, and various clusters of cars all arguing for their own segment of Northampton real estate.
The first pit stop of the year belonged to the BMW owned by the class champion in the Kumho BMW championship Jasver Sapra, whom this time was sharing the car with usual playmate Bryan Bransom. It was Bransom who brought the car in, and there they remained for what felt like an eternity for them as the new paddle shift system was being checked over, this being the first race the car has had with this system in place, however a lap later, Sapra brought the car back in and into retirement. The pitlane was a hive of activity as the next few laps progressed. Mark Smith, whose son runs the Amspeed outfit that looks after a number of the BMWs seen on the CSCC grid, stalled trying to get going from his stop, requiring a push start to get himself going again.
Continued in part 2