Espiritu De Jarama 2016 – Great End To The Year

Jarma is the last stop on the Master Historic F1 World Championship calendar and what a finish from Greg and Classic team lotus.The weekend got off to a brilliant start with Greg taking pole position in qualifying beating Mickey Lyons by 2.037 seconds. Saturday came along and spirits with high with Greg in pole position and the mood only got better, with Greg managing to fend off Mickey Lyons in the Hesketh 308E in the first two corners after that it seem to be plain sailing for Greg as at one point in the race he opened up a 10 seconds lead. Greg took the podiums top step leading from pole to the end finishing the race with a 11 second gap on Mickey Lyons.

 After the race Greg had this to say to the Masters reporters “He tried to get me at the start”, said Thornton. “I thought, you can have as much as you like on the outside, Michael, but I know where I’m braking! Then just when I had opened up a gap of around six seconds and thought about conserving the tyres, I got held up by a backmarker, which dropped my advantage to less than three seconds. I then changed my style a bit to still create some space between me and Michael. I thought ten seconds was enough.”

 Race two saw Greg take another top step on the podium as he had to fend off Mickey Lyons again early on but once he managed to keep his nerve and position it was just a stroll to the finish line and another win for Greg finishing the race 36.9 seconds in front of the chasing pack. Greg also managed to put in 2 fastest laps of the race with a time of 1.28.970. Greg and Mickey spoke to Masters officials after the race and had this to says “I was on tyres that had done 26 laps”, said Thornton, “while Michael was on new tyres. So I reckoned he needed two laps to come on, and then he would be close for a couple of laps before they would go off. So I knew I had to push right at the start to pull the gap. Did I really beat him with half a minute? The guys on the pitwall didn’t tell me that!”

 “The temptation was there in the beginning”, said Lyons when asked about his early charge. “But then I thought, this is silly, I have a championship to win. In all fairness, Max has done a tremendous job all year, that’s why it went to the last race. It was really nice to have fought someone all the way.”

 The full race report for both races can be found here on the Masters website – http://www.mastershistoricracing.com/espiritu-jarama/event/