SNETTERTON
BRSCC
18-19 MAY
Area Motorsport duo Josh Files and Max Edmundson were the class of a quality Civic Cup field at Snetterton, as the former broke his championship duck and the latter maintained his lead atop the standings.
Multiple TCR champion Files had scored two podiums at last month’s season opener despite a faulty differential but, with that diagnosed and fixed, he raced to a brace of wins from pole position at his local circuit.
Edmundson twice followed his illustrious team-mate home, which sandwiched a superb drive to victory in the reversed-grid encounter. He started it ninth, but was fourth within a lap, before passing Spencer Stevenson, who was hampered by damper trouble, then Alex Kite with an audacious outside charge around Coram.
Edmundson eventually pressured team-mate Liam McGill into some mistakes and dived ahead at the Wilson hairpin on the last lap. McGill beat Files to second, the only driver to halt the pair’s dominance.
Carl Swift extended his Audi TT Cup winning run to four before the streak was finally broken. After jumping polesitter Rob Boston, Swift was imperious in Saturday’s races, with team-mate Bradley Burns twice second. Sunday’s partially drawn-grid race was won comprehensively by Adam Blair before he was disqualified for using a non-compliant part, handing Mazda MX-5 champion Steve Foden a maiden success.
Boston’s weekend unravelled when contact affected his geometry, before losing out in more rumbustious racing. After getting spun down the order in race one, 2022 Civic Cup conqueror Matt Luff impressed as he returned to 10th, rose to fourth in the sequel, and inherited second in the finale.
Adam Shepherd came close to a TCR UK hat-trick, easily beating champion Carl Boardley’s similar Cupra Leon in the opener, then rising to second from 10th on race two’s reversed grid. Third within a lap, he set about Boardley, getting a run out of the Agostini hairpin and completing the move into Hamilton. Boardley’s retaliation resulted in contact at Oggies and, although he finished second on the road, the clerk reversed the positions. Ahead of them, Brad Hutchison’s Cupra was largely unchallenged en route to victory.
An exhausted Shepherd took another win on Sunday after grappling with intermittent power-steering failure, a recurrence from Friday testing. Joe Marshall, denied his front-row grid slot a day earlier by drives
