Junior Grand Prix at Rogue Racing - 2007
1st December:
The final round for 2007, would this be Geri's turn for glory?.
The success in terms of entrants for the last round meant that the format needed a rethink. 16 drivers entered this event and the new format comprised just 3 heats of 10 laps apiece (and 6 drivers per race), a semi-final place (12 laps) for the top 12 drivers and a 14 lap final for the top 6. As it was no longer possible to offer each driver one heat from each starting position, grid positions were drawn by computer. On the face of things, Geri had not fared well - three heats from positions 2, 4 and 5, and to make things worse, in Geri's race from 2nd place, James Baldwin was to start from pole with Jack Macaulay starting 3rd!
James had already gone out in the first heat before lining up on pole against Geri in heat two. The two of them disappered from the rest, even leaving Jack Macaulay behind as they set off at a pace the others could not match. They were sitting bumper to bumper with barely a visible gap between them all round the circuit. Geri was trying to find a way past but could not do so up to the point at which they caught the first backmarker ready to lap him. As they rounded the first corner going to the raised straight, Geri pulled out and boxed James in behind the backmarker - James got by again at the end of the straight but Geri made the move stick rounding the hairpin. From this point Geri just pulled away posting faster and faster laps to win the heat.
Geri won his second heat from 4th on the grid but was harshly adjudged to have been too aggressive in a passing manouevre while lapping a backmarker - in proper racing the backmarkers are obliged to not be obstructive when being lapped - and was docked 2 points. In his final heat, starting from 5th Geri got up to second place before a poorly judged overtaking manouevre demoted him to 4th, he got back up to 3rd by the end of the race to finish with 20 points from the three events. This was still enough to earn Geri pole position in his semi-final - and with James Baldwin strangely out of sorts and starting his semi-final well back down the grid, this was Geri's chance to earn pole for the final. A great start meant Geri was clear from the pack by the end of the first lap and could concentrate of setting a fast lap time. Sine setting fastest time of the day in his first heat, Geri had set a new marker in every race thus holding the FTD all day long. For three consecutive laps Geri set 26.88 seconds laps, his personal best and this was more than sufficient to earn pole for the final. Only Geri had been into the 26s all day.
In the final. James started back in 4th and was still looking out of sorts, unable to make any impression on the driver in front. Geri got off to another excellent start before simply driving off into the distance, again setting a string of 26.88s laps to win by 6 seconds. James got his act together late in the race to finish 3rd but matched Geri's FTD with one lap. Geri had both won the event and set equal fastest time of the day, a time he achieved 8 times during the day. Alas Jack Macaulay had just managed to reach the final, the new format not suiting him either and Geri finished just 4 points short.
The 2008 season starts again on January 5th - Geri should be competitive from the start so our hopes for 2008 are high.
