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For the second weekend in row, Jack Byrne battled hard to secure victory in the reverse grid race as he picked up his third win of the Vertu Motors MINI CHALLENGE season.<\/p>\n
The Graves Motorsport driver had started the race from second on the grid behind Ashley Gregory, who held onto her advantage at the front on the run to turn one.<\/p>\n
As she led the field through the opening turns however, there was drama behind as Ben Jenkins and Brendan Fitzgerald ran side-by-side through the chicane, with Fitzgerald forced to run wide as Jenkins got out of shape and suffered a spin.<\/p>\n
That in turn led to Andy Cobb behind being forced to take avoiding action, as was Jacob Heap but the pair made contact before Heap was collected by Paul Manning behind.<\/p>\n
With Heap and Manning both sustaining heavy damage, and Cobb\u2019s car also left stricken on the circuit, the race was red-flagged to allow the cars to be recovered before the action resumed over a shortened distance of 12 laps.<\/p>\n
Gregory again kept the lead off the line ahead of Byrne and Nicky Taylor, with race one winner Tom Ovenden slotting into fourth place.<\/p>\n
Byrne would try to get ahead of Gregory on lap two at Sunny but couldn\u2019t make a move stick, with the Irishman finally managing to get ahead on lap four when he got a better run out of Tower and swept into the lead on the run up to the Esses.<\/p>\n
Taylor tried to follow through at Sunny but Gregory held on around the outside to ensure she held the inside line for the Complex, where she kept her position.<\/p>\n
Two laps later however, Taylor launched his car down the inside at the hairpin to move into second place, with Gregory delayed enough that Ovenden could then sweep around the outside into turn one at the start of lap seven to move into third.<\/p>\n
As Byrne took the race win, Taylor and Ovenden followed him home but Taylor would later be handed a penalty for the contact with Gregory that dropped him two places – putting Ovenden into second and giving Gregory her maiden overall podium finish.<\/p>\n
Behind them, Nathan Edwards produced a charging drive from twelfth on the grid to snare fifth place – breaking the lap record in the process – with Rhys Hurd rounding out the top six after a race long battle with James Black that saw the pair swap places.<\/p>\n
With Black following him home in seventh, Luca Marinoni Osborne, Alex Keens and Frankie Taylor then completed the top ten.<\/p>\n
After his retirement in race one, previous points leader Alex Solley was able to fight his way through to eleventh place, with Max Hall coming from the back to 15th after being caught up in the same incident as Solley in the opening race.<\/p>\n
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For the second weekend in row, Jack Byrne battled hard to secure victory in the reverse grid race as he picked up his third win of the Vertu Motors MINI CHALLENGE season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":23189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1462,1466],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-cooper"],"yoast_head":"\n