Stewart Whyte completes double as Patrick Watts fades

Stewart Whyte completed the double at Brands Hatch as Patrick Watts faded in the latter stages of the race yet again.

Once again Whyte got the jump off the line to get straight in to second place ahead of fellow Honda driver Tom Gladdis, but did not have an answer for the pace of Watts’ Peugeot 406.

Watts was holding a commanding lead around the short Indy circuit, until just after the halfway stage began dropping like a stone, getting gobbled up by the hungry Whyte on the Cooper straight and handing the Scotsman his second win of the day.

Watts’ woes continued as he soon fell in to the clutches of John Cleland, who had inherited third place after Gladdis once again retired. However, Cleland was close to taking third for much of the first half of the race, never more than three tenths of a second behind the Accord.

With the retirement of Gladdis, the battle between the Ford Sierra RS500 of Craig Davies and the Opel Astra of Andy Wolfe ended up deciding fourth place, with the former getting the better of the unique Opel. Had the race been a couple of laps longer, Davies may have found himself on the podium as Watts’ pace dropped.

Filling Andy Wolfe’s mirrors was a thrilling battle between Harry Whale, Mark Wright and Mark Smith, with less than a second separating the three of them with just a minute to go. Whale ended up taking sixth at the drop of the chequered flag, followed by Mark Smith as Mark Wright began to lose pace.

Tony Absolom and Ric Wood once again rounded out the finishers in ninth and tenth respectively, while Alan Strachan and Tom Gladdis retired with mechanical issues.