Sharp wins, Quinn has unusual bodywork incident in Festival heat three

Photo: Ida Wood

B-M Racing’s Jamie Sharp won a shortened third Formula Ford Festival heat, as one of his rivals had his victory hopes ended by an unusual incident.

Sharp made a strong start from pole, having aggressively warmed up his tyres on the way to the grid, with PWR1 Racing’s Jeremy Fairbairn slotting into second. B-M’s Jonny McMullan qualified third but only crawled away from the line before a suspected driveshaft issue meant his car came to a stop just a few metres down the pit straight.

Privateer racer Tom Nippers inherited third and was 1.561 seconds behind the leader after the opening lap. Team Dolan’s Morgan Quinn was just behind him and tried to pass around the outside of Paddock Hill Bend on lap two but could not get the move done, then the safety car was called out.

On lap three race control decided to replace the safety car with red flags while they moved McMullan’s car out of the way, and chose to restart the race from lap one.

Sharp started strongly once again, while Nippers dropped from third to fifth behind Quinn and Oldfield Motorsport’s Brandon McCaughan. Behind them, Alex Berg and Porter Aiken had contact that led to the latter spinning on the Cooper Straight.

Quinn started to pressure Fairbairn for second place, and on lap three made contact with him. It broke his nose cone and sent the front bodywork folding upwards so it completely obscured his forward vision. He was able to drive almost a whole lap with the damage before making it to the pits where his team attempted to repair the bodywork, while Fairbairn was handed a five-place grid penalty for his semi-final.

As Sharp continued to pull away, McCaughan moved into third ahead of Nippers and Berg while Aiken had already recovered to 10th.

On lap five McCaughan tried attacking Fairbairn, and having seen where he defended he attempted to do a switchback move at Paddock Hill Bend the lap after. It worked, and meanwhile Aiken made up further ground to seventh place.

Although Quinn rejoined the race he then later retired, and on lap eight Fairbairn reclaimed second at Druids. As it turned out, McCaughan had damage to the rear of his car and he started dropping down the order before spinning off and into the barriers exiting Paddock Hill Bend the next lap.

Race control red flagged the heat on lap 10, and the leading drivers headed to the pit straight waiting to see if there would be a restart. It was decided there would not be, so they did another lap of the track to get back to the pits.

The results were taken from the end of lap eight, although McCaughan was considered a retiree, and meant Sharp took victory by 1.759s over Fairbairn.

Nippers pipped Berg to third by 0.148s, Vincent Jay was fifth and Aiken was just behind in sixth.

Murray Shepherd missed the race due to damaging the rear-left of his car in a qualifying crash.

Race result (8 laps)