Curetons stay ahead in the P1 150 Class
Round three of the 2011 P1 SuperStock Championship series in Hull came to an exciting conclusion over the weekend in the P1 250 Panther Class for the championship.
The second race provided plenty of excitement with Pertemps driver John Wilson, born and bred in the nearby town of Beverley, taking line honours. Along with navigator Neil Scarborough the pair also secured second place in Saturday’s opening round so increasing their lead in the overall championship standings by 15 points.
Wilson says: “It doesn’t come much better than that. The conditions suited us and we’ve always performed well in the rough.
“We’re a heavier crew which gives the boat added balance when it’s choppy. It was a bit congested at the start but we knew where we had a chance as everything worked perfectly.”
More local success in race two came with the second placed Panther crew Rough Cut Racing, driven by Hull-born Ian Brusby and navigator Dan Whapples.
The podium was rounded-out by Peters & May after competing in much choppier conditions than experienced in the earlier contest.
Kim Collins took over Peters & May on Sunday but couldn’t quite match the winning performance of team mate Daniel Cramphorn on Saturday.
“Once you get clean water you can take the turns how you want to and that’s what we managed to do from the halfway mark”, said Cramphorn after Saturday’s encounter. “When we started to come up to lap the 150s we saw our opportunity, ducked up the inside and pulled out a bit of distance.”
Behind second-placed Pertemps on Saturday came Edox driven by Rupert Pugh and Anthony Crossley. Unfortunately, the duo weren’t able to add another podium on Sunday, dropping down the fleet midway through after Pugh hit a large wave disconnecting his jack plug.
“It’s not the result we were looking for if I’m really honest”, commented Pugh, “Saturday was really good racing, very close, and it was the equivalent of wheel-to-wheel racing in cars, great fun and very nice in the flat conditions. Today was completely different, very bumpy…”
Shelley Jory-Leigh and Dan Smith endured a disappointing weekend aboard Helvetia Wealth, running out of fuel on Saturday (blamed on a slight miscalculation from Shelley’s husband) and then another non-finish on Sunday.
Husband and wife crew Stuart and Sara Cureton continued their domination of the P1 150 class with their fourth and fifth victories from the six rounds already held.
“It’s been a good weekend, really enjoyed it”, said Stuart, “Racing in estuaries isn’t my favourite as it throws up all sorts of funny different water, as shown this afternoon (Sunday), but it’s been good. There was some really tight racing, we had a good fight with Team Fox and Eclipse.
“I was slightly injured while racing a few weeks ago so the smoother the better although we do tend to go well in the rough. Everything went well in the calm on Saturday so we can’t complain, it’s been a great event for us.”
Second place during race one on Saturday evening went to Rose Lores and Tom Hunter in Eclipse, just three seconds shy of the winners, although Sunday’s race didn’t work quite in their favour in the rougher conditions.
“I was pleased with Saturday’s race”, said Rose, “The thing that was quite frustrating was that we felt quite evenly matched with Team Purple but as soon as they got ahead at the first turn that really did it as we were then in the dirty water and it was really hard to catch-up!”
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