Results / Sprints Queen Mary SC - 13/04/2019

Day 1 of the Rooster Zest Southern tour sprints started off with quite light winds and some rain clouds popping around the course.  A M-shaped course right up against the windward side of the reservoir to keep things interesting. The round robin series got underway with good racing throughout the fleet. 6 races were run with no place safe from front to back and the entire fleet finishing within a minute or so. The evening included a visit to a moderately priced curry house follow by a pint or five by the Thames river.

Day 2 go underway in much steadier conditions, so much so that the M-shaped course from the previous day was still true! .

Today the fleets were split into gold and silver and the scoreboard reset. In the gold fleet the battle for first was between the Sam/John Knight and Mike Simms/Jack Holden. Despite the Knights taking the first race, Mike/Jack found their form to take 4 straight bullets and win the gold fleet with Sam in second.

The battle for third was between Caroline Whitehouse/Tony and Sean Cleary/Richard Ashwell. Caroline showed improving pace throughout the day (including 2 second place finishes at the end) to take 3^rd.

In the silver fleet, new-comers Pete Mitchell and Sarah Newton showed great pace to take the win! It is widely expected this paring should be gold fleet contenders in the coming events. Andy Hatch and Lou Hosken also showed great pace taking 3 wins in the silver fleet. However, an OCS for them in race 5 meant they had to settle for 2^nd place.

QM and it’s race team did a great job getting a M-shaped course to work in very shifty conditions.

Many thanks to Rooster and Zest for their continued support and sponsorship of the RS400 Southern tour.

Next up is the Rutland RS Sprints on the 27/28 April followed by the highly anticipated Warsash RS400 open/party!

RS Southern Tour events : https://www.rs400.org/index.asp?Fleet=RS400&selection=Events

Sean Cleary