The Rowdy Roval

After four races of the UK&I Skip Barber League’s first season in 2015 it was Sebastian Job who topped the points standings as Graham Carroll slipped to fourth at Mosport.  The fifth round of the season headed to a notoriously exciting and dangerous track, for a 21 lap race of the r-oval with South Oval at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.  Sitting on pole position was Simon Povey, albeit at a track where converting the pole to victory is anything but a foregone conclusion.  Paul F. Grillo took the other spot on the front row with Fahim Antoniades starting third, while Job could only manage P7 on the grid as Carroll didn’t even make it to the grid.

The obligatory Lap One incident mercifully happened in the mid-field after slight contact between Jonathan Maycock and Abdulkheir Al Amrv at nearly 100mph launched Maycock into a tumble.  Thankfully both sim-racers went off the track to the left at the exit of Turn Two and no other cars were affected.

Luckily this didn’t turn out like a scene from Blues Brothers.

Back at the front, fourth place starter Stuart Adcock grabbed the inside line on Antoniades at Turn Four and moved-up a position.  Wojciech tried to follow Adcock’s line through the corner and drop Antoniades another position, but didn’t have the exit speed to complete the move.

Adcock (52) attacks Antoniades (8).

Antoniades couldn’t keep Swirydowicz behind for long though and he slipped to fifth not long after.  At the end of Lap Three things got even worse for Antoniades as the curbing between Turns 11 and 12 pitched him sideways coming back onto the oval, costing him numerous positions.

This mistake from Antoniades dropped him even further down the order.

The battle for the final podium position reached a tipping point when Swirydowicz made contact with Adcock entering Turn Four, propelling him into a huge slide.  Adcock lost no positions but did suffer damage to his rear wing as Marc Mercer took advantage of Swirydowicz’s subsequent loss of moment to grab fourth as Povey and Grillo began to pull a gap to the rest of the field.

Adcock slides after contact from Swirydowicz.

The situation deteriorated for Adcock at the start of Lap Five as an oversteer moment through Turn One lost him positions to Mercer and Swirydowicz.  Job attacked Adcock at Turn Four as well, but had to fall back in line exiting the corner.

Adcock’s (slight) oversteer at Turn One proved costly.

The front running pack continued racing in very close proximity for the next ten laps, but without any changes of position.  Job broke the silence on Lap 15 with a good run through Turns One and Two that allowed him to slip past Adcock before Turn Four.

Job gets underneath Adcock coming out of Turn Two.

The most incredible thing to happen so far in this race, though, had not been the overtakes throughout the field; but rather the lack of overtaking at the tip of the spear.  Povey had been driving a near flawless race with Grillo just behind for well over a dozen laps until the start of Lap 17 where Grillo used the slipstream and the inside line at Turn One to grab the lead for the first time (and with less than five laps remaining).

Grillo takes the lead from Povey.

At the start of the penultimate lap Swirydowicz was still stuck behind Mercer and looked to the outside of Turn Four to make a move.  Mercer held the line well and Swirydowicz came under attack from Job.  As the pair went side-by-side through Turn Six contact sent Swirydowicz into a spin and put Job in the grass, with Job rejoining in P7 while Swirydowicz dropped to a distant eighth.

Job and Swirydowicz pirouette in Mercer’s mirrors.

In the end Grillo held off Povey’s advances to get his first win of the season by less than half a second.  Mercer took the final podium position over three seconds behind Povey while Adcock managed fourth just ahead of Antoniades.

In the championship Job maintains his lead with 103 while Adcock and Tom Ward are now tied for second place at 80 apiece as Povey moves up four positions into fourth. Grillo was the week’s big winner, going from P37 in the championship all the way up to P13 with the 30 points from his win at New Hampshire.

The championship standings after five races.

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