Sponsor’s dream as Murray wins her first
|
|
Jennifer Murray became the darling of South African motorsport when she won the second Execuline Shelby Can-Am race of the day at East London’s famous former Grand Prix circuit. Driving the Execuline sponsored car, the former karting star qualified second fastest after holding pole position until the dying moments of qualifying when Rui Campos (Hugo Boss) pipped her by less than a 10th of a second on his final lap. Alan Eve (Hugo Boss) was right on the pace and headed row two with Chris Hart (Hi-Q Plettenberg Bay) while the top six was completed by Brian Algar (Firedart) and Sean Greve (Vulcania Reinforcing). There was a fair amount of confusion at the start of the opening race and Murray found herself down in fourth place and adamant that some drivers had jumped the rolling start. There was drama at the fast Potters Pass as Thomas Reib (Intertrans), Dave Beatie (Dura) and Trevor Frost (Strocam) went off in a huge cloud of dust with all three retiring. Campos emerged from the chaos in the lead with Eve hot on his heels and the pair played a cat-and-mouse game until Eve spun with two laps remaining. Hart thus moved up to second and kept everything together as ended as runner-up. That left Sean Greve to take a deserved third after a storming race. Murray was little more than a car length behind with Guy Botterill (Fragram Tools) breathing down her neck as Algar rounded off the top six with Eve a distant seventh. The official result saw Botterill classified sixth after being penalised 10-seconds for passing under yellow flags. Race two featured a partially reversed grid, the top eight first heat finishers starting in order of their lap times, and Murray led from beginning to end after taking full advantage of the somewhat vague rules governing rolling starts. She drove with inch perfect precision and set the fastest lap as she kept her cool to win with almost two seconds to spare over Campos. Hart was third having kept Eve at bay during the final few laps. The ever consistent Algar was ahead of Eve for the first half of the race and was eventually placed fifth as Greve was sixth after the luckless Botterill had an opening lap incident but fought back to eighth behind Bryant vd Merwe (Chemspec). Next stop for the Execuline Shelby Can-Am series is Kyalami on 2nd August. |