Rounds 7 & 8 took place at the Yas Marina Circuit, under the lights on the full F1 track.
As usual Gulf Radical Cup drivers were the first to roll out when the pit lane went green for the usual three hour open pitlane on the Thursday morning. GulfSport Racing driver coach Tommy Erdos was in Ian Roberts’s 2019 SR3 to help improve the balance of the car around the 21 corners of the Yas Marina Circuit, and within 8 laps he had posted some fantastic times and given great feedback to the team. Ian then jumped in the car setting a personal best time, unfortunately for Ian he would not be able to race the weekend due to work commitments.
Meanwhile the rest of the field were honing their skills and setup in preparation for Q1 the next morning. Fran Cush had an incident into turn eight hitting hard the wall and damaging the front and rear of his car, he as fine and the car was rebuilt over night to allow himself and co driver Neil Clark to make the qualifying session.
The first race got underway with reigning champion and series leader Jani Hjerppe on the Pole. The safety car was deployed due to a stopped car on track (Ben Freer), after two laps the race was restarted but with current leader Jeff Curtis closely following the safety car he was handed a questionable drive through penalty, which was served by his team mate James Edmeades just as they came out of the pit stops. This put Steve Adams in the lead but he was being chased hard by Hjerppe and Francis, they passed him into turn 8, shortly after Steve saw an opportunity to re take the lead but a little too eager on the loud pedal saw him rotate the car and come to rest blocking the track. With an apparent clutch issue it took him time to get the car restarted and by the time he did the safety car had been deployed.
This meant Francis lined up behind the safety car, and this is how the race finished as the safety car only pitted as the car approached the chequered flag. However controversy continued in Parc Ferme as news broke that Francis also appeared to also breach safety car conditions and was penalised the equivalent time penalty for what would have been a drive through penalty. This handed victory to Hjerppe, second to Amir Feyzulin and third to Konstantin Tutulov. However after closer scrutiny of the series Sporting Regulations and protest of the penalised drivers the stewards took the unique decision to reverse time lost from the drive through penalty given to Edmeades/Curtis and time penalty to Francis, instead, handing a much lesser 5 second penalty. Given the all cars were bunched up due to the second safety car this of course handed a significant victory to Edmeades/Curtis. Needless to say there was some head scratching in the paddock post race trying to unpick the ASN Stewards decisions!
Race 2 took place the next day under slightly more settled circumstances with Hjerppe taking a win from Edmeades/Cutis and Francis third.
With only a short 2 week break everyone would be back for GP circuit again for Rounds 9 and 10.
