Reports > Castle Combe Carnival Aug 6 2022

Two class wins for Sam Mitchell

The WPR team had four Formula Fords for the pair of Championship races on offer at Castle Combe's Carnival meeting on August 6th 2022.

Ben Mitchell was back, having another outing in the Richard Hudson-Evans owned and Classic Auction Review backed Van Diemen JL16 (the yellow nose car) and for this event his brother, Sam, joined him with the similarly owned and backed Class D Merlyn MK20 which Ben has taken to many previous successes. Sam was making his first appearance at Combe and, for this event, Class D proved to be more popular than usual with five cars entered. The Mitchells were accompanied, as usual, by James Colborn (Class A Van Diemen RF07) and Steve Bracegirdle's Class C Van Diemen RF89.

Qualifying for the two races was very similar with Ben lining up third for both races just behind the Championship front runners, Felix Fisher and Luke Cooper. Sam was comfortably the fastest Class D qualifier while James and Steve were closely matched in mid field.

With Luke Cooper struggling to get the Swift off the line quickly, Ben took advantage to take second behind Felix Fisher where he stayed, before taking the lead on Lap 6. However, the three leaders were very closely matched and Ben dropped to third in the final laps as they all fought for the win and made a mistake coming out of Bobbies although he did take the fastest lap of the race. James made a good start which translated to an encouraging tenth at the finish while Steve pushed on to finish 14th and second in Class C. Sam maintained his position in Class D to take the win and fastest lap.

In Race 2, Ben again held second for the first few laps but wasn't able to match the pace of leader, Felix Fisher and was caught and passed by Luke Cooper on Lap 5 to finish a distant third. James made a poor start,

dropping to 15th but fought back to 12th and improve his lap times by over half a second from Race 1. Steve had a quiet race and finished 17th and second in Class C while Sam found some extra pace (in the1m 12s) as he became more familiar with the car and, following a good start, found himself running in mid field to finish 14th with the Class win and fastest lap in class.