TAYLOR TRIUMPHS IN 2024 FINALE
With Chrome glory already secured by José Eduardo Rodrigues, the Jarama event saw second place go down to the wire between Mark Taylor and Steffen Faas.
The reigning Chrome champion closed the season with two more class wins and an overall podium.
Taylor entered the weekend with a four-point lead over Faas, knowing he only needed to outscore the German to lock in second place in class in his second full season in the championship. Although the two were neck-and-neck on the timing screens during practice, Taylor maintained a small edge that kept him in front throughout the weekend.
He did everything necessary on Saturday to double his lead going into Sunday, needing only to outscore Faas in Race 3 to secure second with a round to spare. Finishing second to Rodrigues gave the Brit the brightest smile on the class podium, where he was joined by his class rival. Two class victories and two overall podiums end the season for Taylor on a high.
John Newell secured fourth in class by outscoring Luis Recuenco in Race 1, locking in the top four championship positions.
Recuenco nearly took a class podium in the third race in front of his home crowd, but a mistake on the penultimate lap allowed Faas to steal the position. For Recuenco, this weekend was about finishing ahead of Clemens Hecker to stay in front of the German in the Chrome standings. Though a third-place finish would have helped, he did enough to hold onto sixth, scoring eight more points than Hecker over the weekend.
The 25 points, however, were not enough to knock Lukas Hahn out of fifth in the Chrome standings. Despite being a race-by-race entrant and not competing in the final rounds in Spain, his advantage from Le Mans was too large for the Spaniard to overcome.Another race-by-race entrant who enjoyed a strong final weekend was Bradley Smith. Scoring 26 points, it was his highest-scoring weekend of the year, pushing him ahead of Luke Garrett in the final standings by three points.
Jonathan André had a quiet weekend at Jarama, but his steady performance earned him a solid 22-point haul from the four races. Combined with his 11 points from Nürburgring, he finished the season with 33 points, placing him tenth in the overall standings.
Craig Reid and Simon Faulkner learned the hard way how punishing the Jarama circuit can be, both suffering spring failures that caused them to miss at least one race each. Across their two events in the championship, they finished 11th and 13th in the Chrome standings, separated by Le Mans one-off entrant Stefan Kursch.here
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