Allaer secures place in FFord Festival final by winning Last Chance Race

Photo: BRSCC

Ammonite Motorsport’s Nolan Allaer won the Formula Ford Festival’s Last Chance Race, which awarded spots in the final to the top six finishers.

Castle Combe FF1600 champion Felix Fisher started the eight-lap race on pole, ahead of Rick Morris in his 42-year-old Royale RP29, with Donal Downey and Allaer on row two of the grid.

Fisher held the lead off the line, and Morris did a good job to resist Allaer on the Cooper Straight but then he had a lock-up at Clearways which meant Allaer and Downey got through.

There was then the issue of backmarker traffic on lap two, but only briefly, as Murray Sherpherd joined the race a lap late.

Fisher had a lead of a second but Allaer set successive fastest laps to bring that down and he got alongside him at the end of lap five. Allaer reached the timing line 0.019s before Fisher, and on the next lap by 0.083s as the pair battled side-by-side.

They went into the final lap split by 0.106s, with Fisher darting around in Allaer’s mirrors but unable to find anywhere to pass. At the chequered flag they were just 0.162s apart, while Downey had dropped 5.965s behind in third.

Morris did a sterling job to hold off more modern machinery, resisting Richard Higgins (who had won the Festival’s Historic final that Morris elected to skip) until lap six when Ben Miloudi and Drew Stewart got ahead of Higgins.

Stewart’s failed attempt at a pass on Miloudi that lap helped Ammonite’s hugh Esterson, who had started 14th but got into 10th on lap one and then picked off a car each lap until getting to eighth.

Higgins actually regained a spot from Miloudi late in lap six, but then Miloudi passed him again on lap seven. Soon there was a group of cars fighting behind Morris, and on the last lap Esterson rode over the rear of Miloudi’s car exiting Druids and landed on his rollhoop. Circuit officials confirmed to Formula Scout that both drivers were uninjured.

Morris ended up pipping Higgins to fourth place, and Stewart took the final spot in the final by finishing sixth. However Henry Chart, who reached the final from the semi-finals, says he will skip the final to seventh-placed Drew Cameron could progress in his place.

Race result (8 laps)