The Virgin Atlantic 250 Miles of Daytona was won by former FV star Marcus Thunder, but only after a hard fight throughout the race from two of the closest contenders, including St Pete race winner Brock Kidd who led throughout the early stages only to suffer from terrible luck which eliminated him from contention. Kidd held the pole position spot ahead of Felipe Cesar for Cerberus and Thunder for Formation, with round one polesitter Addison in fourth. Off the rolling start, this leading quartet started to slipstream away from the rest of the pack, headed by Lewis Ellington in fifth, and all four held the race lead within the first ten laps.
On lap 14, the race was neutralised when Daniel Bruner struck the wall into the first turn while running in 14th position, with Hugh Dwyer unable to avoid the errant Morley car. In the chaos of the trailing pack passing the scene of the accident, Jawa Ahmad was unsighted, hitting the back of team-mate Bruner’s car. The race restarted on lap 19 with Marcus Thunder back in front, but Kidd soon slipstreamed his way back to the front with Cesar close behind in his tow. Addison struggled with understeer after the restart, and fell behind Ellington, Drake Davies and Yakumi Takahashi to 7th position before getting fully up to speed. On lap 24 Keith Murphy pulled into the pits after a slow lap, retiring from 10th with an engine failure. During the second quarter of the race, Kidd and Thunder had a small margin ahead of the remainder of the field, while Drake Davies’ car was coming into its own as temperatures dropped to the high 60s in Fahrenheit – over the course of 10 laps he overtook both Ellington and Cesar to take third place. Though there were battles across the field, including a fierce fight between Rossendo Werner and Callum Brandon not to be in last place, the race settled into a rhythm as fireworks in the infield celebrated the transition from dusk to full night time. The field was closed up yet again when on lap 64, Jamie Gerrard and Rodrigo Sanchez crashed while in 10th and 11th place respectively, bringing a full course caution. The Englishman was caught on the inside in his ill-handling Signature car, sliding up into the side of Sanchez and both cars scraping along the wall in turn 2. Lewis Ellington’s fine race came to an end when a gearbox failure during the caution period resulted in a retirement from 7th place, just a lap before the restart came on lap 70. Drake Davies was once again looking racy in the cool temperatures and immediately pounced on Thunder on the rear straight. However, disaster struck for leader Brock Kidd when Davies finally ran out of grip on lap 74 – he slid wide into turn 3, the Aggies car clipped Kidd’s rear wheel and pitched him into the wall and out of the race in spectacular fashion. Miraculously nearly the entire field missed the accident, with the exception of Hiroto Nakumaya who was drafting Dino Palma in an attempt to steal tenth place, and was therefore un-sighted until the last moment. Kidd and Nakumaya both climbed from their wreckages while Davies managed to continue, albeit he fell to fourth with a damaged car. This brought out the third safety car of the race to clear the wreckage, and promoted Marcus Thunder back into the lead ahead of Cesar and Addison. The race was eventually resumed on lap 83 with Thunder getting by far the best restart as Cesar and Addison began to struggle. Davies retired in the pits on lap 89 after the crash damage proved too major to handle and he slipped to the back of pack, which promoted Takahashi, Stokey and Enzo Domenicalli to 4th, 5th and 6th respectively. After a close final 10 laps, Thunder ended up as the relatively comfortable winner ahead of Cesar and Addison, and in doing so became the first winner of both an FV and IndyVirtual race.
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April 2018
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