Charlotte Birch continues her progress, takes a step closer to the top-10 at Oulton Park

Following one of her most successful weekends in the Milltek Civic Cup last time out at Croft, Charlotte Birch continued her strong mid-season form by once again improving upon her season’s best result with a P13 and a P11 at Oulton Park, narrowly missing out on a top-10 displaying excellent pace.

Photo credits: Milltek Civic Cup

Charlotte Birch continued her strong mid-season form in the Milltek Civic Cup by once again improving upon her season’s best result. Birch qualified inside the top-15 at Oulton Park before finishing race one in 13^th position. Despite receiving contact in race two, the Vinna Sport driver displayed excellent pace as she finished in 11^th, narrowly missing out on a top-10 result.

Following one of her most successful weekends in the Milltek Civic Cup last time out at Croft, Birch arrived at Oulton Park aiming to continue this momentum. In races two and three in Yorkshire, Charlotte scored championship points including an excellent 12^th place result to close out the event. Birch’s race pace was particularly strong as she used her racecraft to gain positions in all three races, while pushing towards her maiden top-10 finish of the season.

Oulton Park was a circuit which Birch had little experience of prior to the weekend and therefore testing prior to the event proved valuable. The Milltek Civic Cup utilised the Island layout with the Island hairpin providing a good overtaking opportunity. Otherwise, overtaking is notoriously challenging at Oulton Park and therefore qualifying was to set to play an important part over the two races during the event.

Qualifying took place early on Saturday morning with cool and dry conditions at Oulton Park. The first half of the session ran uninterrupted and Birch was steadily improving her times while showing excellent speed through the middle sector.

With a little over seven minutes remaining, the session was red flagged and subsequently restarted for a revised duration of five minutes. The Vinna Sport driver returned to the circuit and with a personal best time of a 1:37.511 on her final lap of the session, Birch set the 15^th fastest lap to secure her third top-15 qualifying result of the season.

Photo credits: Milltek Civic Cup

Race one of the weekend took place early on Saturday afternoon with Birch lining up from 15^th on the grid. She was immediately promoted one position after damage sustained in qualifying forced Jack Ruddell to withdraw from the race. It was initially a challenging start for Charlotte as she fell to 16^th at the end of lap one, while Adam Jackson started lap two just a quarter of a second behind.

On lap two, Birch was both attacking as well as defending and when attempting a move at the Island hairpin, her right-side tyres touched the grass. This led to her sliding the rear under braking and following some good car control, she managed to avoid making contact with the drivers ahead. Nonetheless, this moment had lost her some time and she fell to the rear of the field.

After Josh Bromley pitted at the end of lap two, Birch was back up to 17^th position and she was now working hard to close the gap to the drivers ahead. On lap four, William Butt and Ben Bateman made contact at Cascades and with both cars out of the race, Birch was now inside the top-15. Jake Hewlett was now ahead after he left the road at Druids and did well to avoid making significant contact with the barrier.

On lap five, Birch overtook Adam Parker and after Jackson spun off the road at Druids, the Vinna Sport racer was now up to 13^th position. Birch was doing a nice job to close the gap to the drivers ahead before the red flag was displayed as barrier damage following Jackson’s off led to the race being stopped. With just three minutes remaining, the race was not restarted with Birch classified in a solid 13^th to begin the weekend at Oulton Park.

Photo credits: Milltek Civic Cup

Race two of the weekend took place later on Saturday afternoon with the lineup based on the results from race one, with the top-10 reversed. Birch started from 13^th position and did a superb job to avoid a stalled car ahead of her. By the end of the first lap, the Vinna Sport driver was running in 12^th position.

As William Butt closed in on lap two, Birch had to defend her position as the drivers began lap three. Butt looked to the inside of Birch into Cascades and contact was made between the drivers as they both ran wide. Charlotte did a good job to recovery; however she was now in 13^th position as the drivers began lap four.

Birch was quickly applying the pressure to Bateman ahead and after sizing up the best place to make the move, she overtook her rival on lap six. After Jake Renshaw pitted, Charlotte was now into 11^th position and targeting her first top-10 finish of the season.

Despite a sizeable gap ahead of her, Birch was pulling away from the drivers behind and setting consecutive personal best laps in the process. On the final lap of the race, Charlotte was the fifth fastest driver on track as she took the chequered flag in a strong 11^th position.

It was a positive event for Birch at Oulton Park as she took another step forward to challenging for top-10 positions. Charlotte did a nice job to negotiate incidents throughout the weekend and extend her run of consecutive points scoring races to four.

The Vinna Sport driver will now be looking to build upon this speed when the Milltek Civic Cup returns at Snetterton on the weekend of 13^th/14^th September.