Lucas Blakeley gets his first National FF1600 win at Brands Hatch

Photo: Ida Wood

KMR Sport’s Lucas Blakeley claimed his first BRSCC National Formula Ford 1600 win in the reversed-grid race at Brands Hatch.

Blakeley lined up fourth on the grid, but made a strong start and committed to the outside line going through the first corners as PWR1 Racing’s Jeremy Fairbairn started slowly from pole.

Ammonite Motorsport’s Nolan Allaer went around the outside of him to take the lead straight away, and he had a gap of 0.152 seconds to Blakeley at the end of lap one. Blakeley was sat in his slipstream and he darted out on the run to Paddock Hill Bend, getting the move for the lead done by Druid.

Once ahead, Blakeley began to pull away and he finished the race 3.665s clear of second place. Allaer was quickly shuffled down to third by Oldfield Motorsport’s Brandon McCaughan, who actually finished 3.424s behind Blakeley but copped a five-second penalty for track limits abuse that dropped him to sixth place.

His team-mate and points leader Lucas Romanek therefore inherited second, although it was a tough job to climb the order. On lap four he almost went three-wide with Team Dolan’s Jordan Kelly and Allaer exiting Graham Hill Bend, and on lap five passed Kelly with Fairbairn doing the same a lap later.

Romanek then passed Allaer on lap seven, and had a big gap to make up on the top two. He eventually closed it down, but with Kelly on his tail pretty much throughout and they finished 0.141s apart.

Allaer was another to get a track limits penalty, meaning he dropped from fourth to eighth after holding off a queue of cars consisting of Morgan Quinn, Elliott Budzinski and Fairbairn.

Race result (18 laps)