Wright Puts Britain On Top At Silverstone
The final race of the day on the Saturday at the World Series by Renault at Silverstone was the ‘Cross Channel Challenge’ Clio Cup race, and a Championship round proper of the Dutch Clio Cup. Britain’s Luke Wright had earlier qualified 0.736secs quicker than anyone else to claim pole position and bragging rights over his Dutch rivals.
Starting side by side with Niels Langeveld from the Dutch series, Wright was on the outside line going down to turn one at Copse. The start however didn’t go quite to plan for Wright as he fell back to second through the first corner. It didn’t take him long to take the place back and over the course of the next few laps built up sufficient gap to allow him to bring it home for the overall win, on top of the ‘Cross Channel Challenge’ win, and the Graduate Cup win in the same category.
Second of the Brits and 5th overall was BTCC driver Jeff Smith. Starting sixth, Smith didn’t enjoy the best of starts, and race long found himself battling among the Dutch cars. The result of the battling was a fifth place overall. The difference in lines through some of the corners was evident, with Smith taking a much better line through Copse than the vast majority of the Dutch racers.
Simon Belcher too found himself involved in the middle an Anglo-Dutch battle, but found himself on the wrong end of contact and found himself demoted well down the field in the early stages. Undeterred he put in consistent laptimes quicker than those around him and fought himself back up to finish in 14th overall.
Race two takes place at 16:45 on Sunday, with Luke Wright once again starting from pole position this time alongside Marcel Dekker from the Dutch series. Jeff Smith starts from 5th with Simon Belcher back in 15th.
Photo: Richard Devine
Richard Devine
