Rowledge takes win number eight at Silverstone

Josh Rowledge earns his eighth win of the season, holding off Kenato Le to emerge victorious from the first race of the weekend at Silverstone.

Rowledge, who qualified seventh, got a strong start to join the back of the lead fight in the opening laps.

For much of the race it was a four-way battle for the lead. Le first held the position, but Rowledge came through to take the position as Le was shuffled back to fourth. Liam McNeilly took up second and kept the pressure on Le, before slipping back behind Le and Harri Reynolds.

While Reynolds battled with McNeilly, Le continued to challenge Rowledge for the lead. Rowledge defended hard, making his Ginetta extremely wide, and held onto the position to finish 0.172s ahead of Le. McNeilly and Reynolds ran side by side for a number of corners before McNeilly managed to get his nose ahead and shuffled Reynolds back to fourth.

Sonny Smith started the race from pole, but didn’t stay there for long. Le jumped past Smith off the line, leaving Smith to battle against Reynolds and Will Macintyre. The two drivers behind squeezed Smith and the R Racing driver was sent into a spin. He was then collected by a driver further down the field. Smith was able to continue and limped back to the pits, but it took him out of contention for a points paying position. Macintyre also dropped down the order and finished P11.

Freddie Slater held onto fifth for his best finish of the season. Slater was briefly in the train of cars at the front of the order, but couldn’t keep pace with them. He spent most of the race alone, before Luke Watts caught him in the closing stages of the race.

Watts had battled his way to the front of a multi-car fight for sixth and rapidly closed the gap to Slater. He was less than a tenth of a second back when the chequered flag fell.

Maurice Henry took seventh, half a second back, while Alisha Palmowski and McKenzie Douglass rounded out the top 10.

Full results to follow.

Image credit: Ginetta/Jakob Ebrey Photography

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