Report by Tom Green (Top Photon UK Team) 

After missing the first round of the LRP cup due to a clash with another championship I was hoping to get off the ground with a good point score in round two. I hadn’t had a lot of track time on the LRP CPX tire and after the horror stories I had been hearing I wasn’t looking forward to it! But the Photon has been just brilliant on carpet so I was confident of a good result.

After my practice run it became obvious the CPX tires didn’t give a massive amount of grip, and the cars were sliding around a lot. Reluctant to panic I waited to see if the traction came to the car a little but after two average qualifying runs it became obvious I would have to move from my normal set up, The local drivers were pushing very hard and were very settled on the low grip track.

By the final round of qualifying with a set up on the car that was identical to the kit set up I had a well balanced car in the difficult conditions. Unfortunately a catch of the tape put the car against the barrier and I was passed by a lot of cars!, Once the car was back on track I could push much harder and managed to drive up to second behind Zak Smith who took a well deserved first for qualifying. The photons pace was brilliant scoring the fastest lap in qualifying.

The finals turned out to be a mixed bag, the grip was down even more and the cars were struggling for consistency. Zak had a great start and pulled a gap, I managed to close the gap and we took it in turns to make errors and swap the lead with Zak eventually coming out on top.

For the second final I used a different steering set up to make the car a little safer and once again the track was a moving target and I found massive under steer, it was very difficult to be neat and fend off the other cars. After a disappointing start I found myself in fourth place, Zak made an error and dropped out of the race, then another collision in front gifted me first place. I came under attack from Ritchie Thorn who drove like a true gent and we had a brilliant race for first, unfortunately he made an error and I under steered across the line in first place!. My combined points gave me first overall.

To sum the meeting up it was a good fun day, the track is very well presented and the racers are competitive but fair. The only sore point for me was the rubber!.

I’d like to thank Zak Smith, Ritchie Thorn and Nick Priest for the brilliant racing and at times more than fair driving. And also a big thanks to Alex Everett who was the only other Photon driver at the meeting and was a great help all day!