Charlie Hand endures a day of dramas in title challenge

But almost a season’s dramas came all at once at Donington Park, with the scorching heat a major factor.

He qualified second quickest in his class for the opening race, only 0.481 secs off the pole sitting Rhys Lloyd/Matthew Dawson car.

“Rhys was following me when he got the time too,” said the Crawley teenager.

Having held station from the start, he came under pressure from Westbourne team-mate Jack Meakin and lost his second place after four laps. “I made a mistake at Coppice, lost the back end and he was able drive by onto the straight,” he explained.

Having started to lose ground in third, Hand was one of the last to make his compulsory stop on the 22nd lap.

He re-emerged as the class leader but was not only caught but past after 35 laps by Richard Ashmole. But he managed to hang on grimly to his rival, taking the place back on the last lap, only to receive a penalty for overtaking under yellow flags, dropping him back to second.

“When I came out of the pits I just kept my head down and pushed on. I hadn’t been feeling well the days before the race and started tire, but then I started running out of fuel. It had been surging on the Craner Curves every lap, which had allowed Ashmole to catch me, just losing power as we think it was evaporating,” he explained.

“I just tried to hang on when he got by and took him again into the chicane on the last lap to win on the road, before I got the penalty,” he added.

In a shortened and restarted second race due to an earlier accident, he was brilliant seventh overall at the start, but had Lloyd challenging him again.

“It was disappointing as I had the class lead and was going clear when the race had to be stopped,” he said.

“I had re-energised myself before the restart though, but Lloyd lunge at me to take second at Redgate and I tried to stay with him to pull away,” he added.

Meakin had closed in too, as there was little to separate the lead trio for a while

Out came the safety car though before the green flags signalled a two-lap sprint to the flag. But Hand’s car didn’t respond and Lloyd was away and clear in the class lead. “Ashmole went flying past everyone before we had the green flag, but then went off. I had the same fuel problem though, it just kept cutting out,” he concluded after Meakin had closed in again to snatch second on the last lap, a disappointing end to a promising day.