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Arskap Cup XLII: From R.Headington's point of view

There was a trilling end to the Arskap Cup XLII, as Headington came so close to getting his first ever custom series win.

Despite finishing 2nd place in the Beach cup XXVI the day before, Headington was unsure where he would be able to finish with F1 driver E.Diesel, 3 top 100 drivers and 4 other higher ranked drivers taking part.

It didn't start well for Headington, Le Mans is not one of his better tracks and then a crash in the Singapore sprint race meant that after 3 races, he was 7th in the standings with 16 points, 52 behind the leading E.Diesel.

Headington always likes a fightback though. In this case, the fightback started in the last 5 laps of the Singapore sprint race, where he recovered from 24th to 12th. This gave him a platform to get some good points and Headington was able to use this together with the changeable conditions to pull off an unlikely win.

Now he needed to build on this if he was to have a chance of getting a trophy. And this is what he did as he finished the next 4 races in the top 4. This put the standings as follows:

1 E. Diesel 138
2 D. O'Brien 119
3 R. Headington 98
4 K. Raikkonen 85
5 R. Bezrukov 78

At this point Headington was just hoping that he would be able to hold on to 3rd. The top two looked too far away while Raikkonen and Bezrukov had a very strong couple of races. But then two victories in Monte Carlo looked to secure a trophy:

1 E. Diesel 171
2 R. Headington 148
3 D. O'Brien 146
4 K. Raikkonen 115

and gave Headington a slim chance of winning the title with 2 races to go.

Pole in Helsinki was a good start. Then it got better as while Headington got the win he needed to have a chance at winning the title, Diesel made a mistake which dropped him from 3rd to 5th.

1 E. Diesel 181
2 R. Headington 173
3 D. O'Brien 152

For Headington it was simple, he had to win and hope that Diesel couldn't climb up to 2nd in the twisty streets of Helsinki.

Headington lost the lead on lap 6 after a mistake. Next lap Raikkonen was too aggressive while defending Headington's overtaking move and caused a collision. Although Headington got no damage, Bezrukov took the lead while raikkonen retired, a big blow as he was one of the 3 drivers he was hoping would be able to come between himself and Diesel. Diesel moved up to 4th.

Lap 11 was something of a mixed blessing, Bezrukov made a mistake giving the lead back to Headington but also falling behind Diesel who moved up to 3rd. Now there was only Rüdiger von Rotz, a 19 year old talented driver who has potient but had only been able to pick up 31 points, between Headington and Diesel. However all wasn't lost, he had finished ahead of Diesel in the Helsinki sprint race and other drivers could still overtake him.

Things looked up as Diesel lost ground to Rüdiger von Rotz in the pitstops. On Lap 39, Rüdiger von Rotz had built up a 4 second lead over Diesel while Headington's lead was 6.8 seconds. Unfortunately, these were both eradicated by a safety car. The safety car came in, giving us 3 more laps to race. The first of these was uneventful, Headington was only 2 laps away from his first ever custom series win.

Rüdiger von Rotz had done a fantastic job of keeping such a good driver behind him for 44 laps and even pulling away at some points. But unfortunately, his youth showed as he made a mistake costing him 2 seconds and 2 places. The safety car had robbed him of his 4 second lead and his chance of a deserved podium. This gave Diesel the 2nd place he needed to win the title by a single point.

Despite Headington's disappointment, he is proud of what he has achieved in this series:

"It is really gutting to be that close to achieving something that I thought was far out of my reach. But I need to take the positives. After 12 races I was only a single point behind an F1 driver and I was able to finish ahead of three top 10 divers. That's a real confidence booster. I can't expect to be able to do this every series but it shows I'm developing in the right direction. I just have to try and take this form into my F2 season, as that hasn't been going as well as it should."

One thing that everyone can agree on is that we hope that there are many more series that are as close and exciting as this one.