The number 23 cuts down the Championship lead as Seabright crashes out at the final corner
Cameron Horsman won a dramatic second race at Snetterton in the British Talent Cup, locked in a duel with Race 1 winner Fenton Seabright throughout and everything coming down to the final lap and corner. Seabright was ahead out of that final corner before a dramatic highside, with Horsman able to just avoid his stricken rival and take the flag and victory. Championship leader Scott Ogden, who started from 19th on the grid after a costly crash in qualifying, repeated his Race 1 heroics to slice through to take the podium, this time in second, with Charlie Farrer taking his first rostrum in third.
It was Seabright who got the holeshot from pole, with the top four on the grid remaining where they’d started: Scott Swann was in second ahead of Brian Hart, with Horsman down in fourth and unable to make much headway. That was also true of Ogden as he made up only a handful of places on Lap 1, into 15th compared to his immediate leap into the top ten on Saturday. But Horsman was soon on the move and up into second on Seabright’s tail – seemingly, Saturday’s 13-second advantage was not to be repeated for the number 22.
Ogden was up into ninth by then as Horsman struck for the lead for the first time on Lap 3, although Seabright was quick to return the favour into Turn 1 on Lap 4. And that soon rinsed and repeated as Horsman attacked again at Brundle corner and Seabright took him back at Turn 1.
Horsman was back ahead not long after and from there it settled into a high-speed game of chess between the front duo as Ogden set about making his mark a little further back. Having caught the group squabbling over third, the number 4 fought his way through it and was able to start pulling away – was it too late to try and catch the leaders?
It was, and although the gap fluctuated by a tenth here and there, the race was set as a duel to the line. Coming onto the final lap, Seabright had spent half the race tagged onto the back of Horsman, so the plan seemed clear: leave it late. The move came at Brundle and the number 22 was then pushing to defend, and he managed to stay ahead into the final corner – but that’s when disaster hit. On the exit the number 22 suffered a dramatic highside right in his rival’s path, with Horsman taking to the grass to avoid and left heading towards the line alone.
The win cuts the number 23’s deficit to Ogden down to just 12 points ahead of the two final rounds, with Seabright’s challenging facing the opposite hiccup. Ogden, having been riding around in a lonely third place, was promoted to second by the last minute drama, and Charlie Farrer, who won the squabble just up the road that was fighting for fourth, instead completed the podium and took home his first rostrum finish.
A few tenths behind Farrer, Scott Swann just edged Jack Nixon to fourth place, with Brian Hart just a further few tenths in arrears in sixth. Rhys Irwin was able to escape the clutches of Jack Hart to take a solid seventh.
Corey Tinker next up as he took ninth, just getting the better of Torin Collins over the line, who completed the top ten as he fought off Zak Shelton and Charlie Atkins. Harry Leigh was the final finisher in 14th after some high rates of attrition for Harvey Claridge, Edward O’Shea, Osian Jones, Jamie Davis, Jamie Lyons and Ross Maguire.
After the drama of Race 2 it’s now only 12 points in it as the British Talent Cup heads to Brno to complete alongside MotoGP™, with 100 points still on the table. Will Ogden extend his lead next time out? Or can Horsman once again come out swinging and keep chipping away at that gap? Find out in two weeks at the Czech Grand Prix.
