VW Racing Cup Snetterton Race Report

Last weekend, RAVENOL’s partner series, the Volkswagen Racing Cup, was at Snetterton for Round 2 of what is shaping up to be an exciting season.

Race 1

A shortened first Volkswagen Racing Cup race saw Josh Coggan blast to the front, taking his first win of the year and the championship lead. Coggan started from the second row, but benefited from the leaders’ mistakes to break away from the rest of the pack.

Ahead of him, Rob Allum had already outpaced pole sitter Simon Walton before the first corner, though it would go bad to worse for Walton, spinning his Audi TT and dropping to the back of the grid. Allum survived the hairpin incident, but sacrificed the lead to the fast starting Josh Coggan after he’d run deep into the corner. The two then quickly pulled away as the field bunched up behind.

Sadly the race was red flagged after a crash between Brett Smith and Dan Crossley, with the latter being flipped into barrier at the pit entrance, landing on top of the barrier. Both drivers walked away, but were taken to hospital for checks. Once the cars had been extracted from the track, there was not enough time to restart so race leader Josh Coggan was declared the winner. Joining him on the podium was Rob Allum and Tony Prendergast.

Race 2

For Race 2, Russell Joyce started on pole because of the reverse grid format, whilst Coggan started from sixth, with an additional 60kg of success ballast on board. However starting positions didn’t seem to have much impact on race position by the end of the opening lap – Lewis Smith scythed his way from tenth to take the race lead by the end of the lap, whilst Coggan also had a blistering start, leading by the hairpin, although dropping back after being caught out by slippery conditions at Oggies.

A safety car was called after contact between Matt Evans and Rob Allum saw them up on the infield, and Jack Depper also spun into the wall. Meanwhile his father Martin Depper had fared much better, working his way up from eighth to second by the time the safety car was deployed.

Depper then continued to close the gap to Smith. Once he’d caught up, he took a close line through Bomb Hole, whilst Smith took the outside line. Depper was then on the outside for Murrays and drove around Smith to take the lead. From there he was in the clear, setting personal bests and breaking away for his first win of the year, taking the championship lead as a result.

Coggan caught Smith in the closing laps, but the Maximum Motorsport driver remained strong, forcing the race one winner into a mistake at Brundle. Smith would take second, his first podium of the season, with Coggan coming home in third.