Race Report - Formula 5

Anglesey 5/6-7-8

Formula 5 made its second trip across the water as Formula Libre visited the Anglesey circuit in Wales for the second time in two years. Mark Reade returned to the scene of his first class win last year and picked up right where he left off, securing a brace of wins around the impressive Welsh circuit.
David Heavey made his racing return for the first time since last September, standing in for the absent John Downey and he benefited from a productive days testing to take both class poles for the weekend. Despite missing the previous days test due to work commitments, Reade showed his intentions by lining up second with Kevin Gillespie, who was making his first appearance at Anglesey rounding out the top 3.

What happened before the first race was without doubt, the most bizarre thing that has happened to the team in its history. As the team worked feverishly to repair Gillespie’s car after a problem in qualifying, the Welsh heavens opened with a heavy downpour 30mins before the race which continued right up to the point the drivers strapped themselves in. The quick decision was made to switch to wets, justified by the massive puddles in the paddock area. When the drivers lined up in assembly, they noticed something odd, as David Heavey explains: “I arrived to assembly and was thinking: what the hell are those guys doing on slicks? So we left for the grid and here is a bone dry track looking at us. I thought that the back of the circuit must be soaking because that rain shower was massive. But oh no, completely dry. Only in Wales.”
Despite two steady warm up laps, hoping that a threatening rain cloud would deposit its content, the race was dry throughout. Heavey got a good start and pulled out a gap in the opening laps as his team mates were cautiously exploring the conditions. He maintained a comfortable gap to Reade until lap 4 by which the threat of rain had failed to materialise and he pulled into the pits, electing not to ruin John Downeys wets.
Despite early pressure from Gillespie, Reade was able to use his circuit knowledge to his advantage, pulling a gap by mid distance and maintaining it for the one litre class win. The Dunlop wets stood up to the dry track extremely well, which was a testament to the tyres construction, and some consolation for the team after their clumsy error. As if on queue, as the chequered flag was shown, the heavens opened.

For race 2, Heavey again made a good start, managing to jump some of the quicker cars up the grid on the opening lap. Both he and Reade were forced to the grass at the end of the opening lap when two runners were caught out by oil at the final corner. With no damage suffered and minimum time lost, they set off again, now running inside the overall top ten. Heavey had a gap and a car between himself and Reade, who had Gillespie for close company. As Heavey pushed to maintain his cushion and to try catch cars ahead, he made a mistake onto the start/finish straight, which saw him run wide.
He collected debris from the opening lap incident which became wedged under the front end, resulting in another self induced DNF for the Kildareman. This left Reade and Gillespie to fight it out for class honours and in similar fashion to the first race, Reade monitored the gap to Gillespie and brought his DH01 for yet another 1 litre win. The class is back in action at Mondello Park in two weeks time where John Downey will return and both he and Kevin Gillespie will be keen to end Reade run of good results on home soil.