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The Real Cycle People
44 George Street, Perth

Croft - 10/11/12 August

Perthshire teenager Robbie Stewart capped an almost perfect race weekend with his second win of the season as he spectacularly led from lights to flag in Round 10 of the British 125GP Championship at Croft.

Never out of the top three all weekend, Robbie had set the pace right from the outset, topping the timesheets in Friday's 1st free practice session on his KRP Honda. The North Yorkshire circuit combines fast sweeping corners with a slow and technical final section, so the team made the best of the dry conditions throughout the weekend to obtain a perfect set up for race day.

A stunning first 1st qualifying session - also held on Friday due to Croft’s weekend noise restrictions - saw Robbie take provisional pole by more than a second, a margin almost unheard of in 125cc racing. Although he was overhauled by a fraction of a second in Saturday's 2nd qualifying session by series veteran Michael Wilcox, Robbie was confident about his race pace and was quite content to start Sunday's race from second spot on the grid of 44 bikes.

Having again been fastest in the brief race-day warm up session, only the gathering clouds could threaten to spoil the day, but by the time the 125s took to the track for the final race of the afternoon, conditions were again warm and sunny.

At the lights Robbie got the drop on the rest of the pack and led into the first corner before impressively stretching his lead by almost a second a lap. Having built a five second lead by the fifth lap, the race was then disrupted when Robbie's team mate Nikki Coates had a huge crash on the back part of the circuit and the safety car was deployed. With his lead back down to almost nothing, Robbie had it all to do again when the safety car finally pulled in, and this time he had UK1's Kev Coghlan right on his tail. Once more though, Robbie started to build a gap as he outpaced Kev, and when his fellow Scot was signalled to pull in with a technical fault, Robbie's total domination of the race was complete. Far from easing up however, he continued to push hard and set a new lap record of 1.26.613 (on lap 9) on the way to winning the race by a margin of almost seven seconds.

While a number of DNFs at the start of the season effectively ruled Robbie out of title contention, he now sits in 4th place in the Championship, only four points behind Michael Wilcox, so he will be hoping that good performances at the remaining three rounds will see him reach the top three by the end of the season. In the Cup competition, Robbie now leads the standings with a commanding 23 point lead, and will hope to carry his race winning form to the next round at the spectacular Cadwell Park circuit in Lincolnshire at the end of August.

Reports from other rounds.

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