01 Apr 2015 Circuit Hero Two: Classic battle

At 3pm on 22 March, 2015 Pan Delta Super Racing Festival's Circuit Hero Two class gets ready for battle. 43 cars appear on the grid for the last Circuit Hero race of the weekend. The drivers simply cannot wait to start after having seen so much action.

This grassroot class has always attracted the most number of entries and is often very well supported by the fans, some of whom are the families and friends of the drivers. The local flavour is unmistakeable. Kuang Can-Wei, Zhong Zhi-Jun and Gary Sham are some of the more successful drivers in the entry list.

Kuang Can-Wei will start on pole position in his Scirocco after registering a 1:46.972 fastest lap in qualifying yesterday. Zhong Zhi-Jun is second in his Honda Civic, while Chen Zhong is third in another Scirocco.

The race is delayed by 5 minutes due to the red flag in the preceding ZIC Superbike race. But that's not a big problem. The red lights go out and the cars rush to the first corner. Chen Zhong's Scirocco manages to sneak ahead of Zhong Zhi-Jun, who is in second place. Zhong then keep pressing on Chen, looking for a way past.

At the end of lap 1, Kuang Can-Wei leads Chen Zhong and Zhong Zhi-Jun, with about a second's gap among them. The huge number of cars have the fans looking from right to left all the time. On lap 3, one of the cars loses control and runs into the sand trap. It retires on the spot.

The two Sciroccos continue to lead. Lap 5, the cars in front are lapping the backmarkers. Lap 6 the top three are a safe distance away from each other and it seems the podium positions are spoken for.

At turn 2 on lap 7, #12 Zeng Jian-Wen's Honda Civic understeers onto the grass and sand, dragging up a lot of dust. Now the focus is shifted back to Chen Zhong and Zhong Zhi-Jun's battle for second. Zhong has moved himself within striking distance of Chen and is trying to get past. But soon Chen Zhong uses the backmarkers to put some distance between them again.

On the last lap, Kuang Can-Wei leads by a big margin and wins the race, while Chen Zhong defends his position well from Zhong Zhi-Jun as they finish second and third respectively.

Race results: http://www.zic.com.cn/en/event_list.php?kind=Race%20results