The last three rounds of the Goodyear Touring Car Trophy/TCR UK took place at Donington Park last Monday August 30th, and Max Hart went into the weekend fourth in the championship, and still within a chance of taking the title. Max was carrying 100kg success ballast and qualified his Maximum Motorsport Hyundai i30 N TCR in fifth position.
Race 1: Max made a brilliant start, and was challenging for second position on lap 3, when due to his extra weight, had a simple breaking lock up and slide wide and dropped to tenth position, but fought his way back to finish in fifth place by the race finish.
Race 2: Due to the top six from race one being reversed Max started second and worked his way into the lead. However in the heat of the battle he lost out when he got hit and pushed out wide, but finished a very creditable second to keep his championship hopes alive, as he moved up to third in the championship standings going into the final race.
Race 3: Max lined up in fourth position for the final race, but on the warm up lap his car suffered a lack of boost due to a damaged pipe. With nothing to lose Max took the start and drove to finish in tenth position to collect some valuable points.
So after a very challenging and character building season Max finished the championship in fourth position 25 points behind the champion. However it was a bittersweet feeling for Max, as his round 3 race win with fastest lap and the 26 points he earned was stripped from him in a post race scrutiny for the fitting of a non performance related wheel spacer to his car. Without this exclusion Max would have been a worthy champion.
Many thanks to Selco Hygiene, Adapt Paper Products, Dunshaughlin Motors, Digital Motorsport, J.W Carnegie & Co Ltd, www. pbc.ie, Maximum Motorsport, Noel Roddy Racing and Hyundai Motorsport Customer Racing @HMSGOfficialN