Jamaica drove away in the lead of the Seaboard Marine Caribbean Motor Racing Championship (CMRC) country points after several key performances at the opening leg of the series held last weekend at JamWest Speedway, Westmoreland. Jamaica now sits on 323 points to the nearest competitor Guyana with 159.

Jamaica’s massive haul was led by Montegonian Jordan Powell, who swept all three of his Group 2 races on the day to collect a maximum 75 points.

“It was quite unexpected,” Powell told Auto.

Powell raced in his Honda Civic, which took him to a third-place overall finish in Rally Jamaica 2014.

“The car had come from Japan as a circuit car and we converted it to do rally,” he explained.

For the CMRC meet it was just a matter of switching back the original suspension.

“JamWest is a fast track that suits my style,” he added.

Powell’s success came on the front of a less than dominant performance by the Jamaica team on home soil. The saving grace came from numbers, with racers like George Bayley taking up the slack in Group 4, the class reserved for the high-powered machines. Since the absence of Douglas Gore and David Summerbell Jr, Peter Rae was expected to hold the flag high in Group 4, but his car suffered a major malfunction after a best-placed second position finish in the opening race.

“The motor was running hot and on the second-to-last lap I started to see smoke coming from the engine, so I pulled over and jumped out of the car,” Rae said.

Moments later his Mazda RX-7 would burst into flames only to be put out by the nearby track marshals. Rae was unable to compete for the rest of the day and Bayley slotted into second for the remaining two races, bringing in 50 points for his effort. Guyanese racer Kristian Jeffery topped the Group 4 table winning all three races for a maximum 75 points.

Jamaica languished at the bottom of Group 3, grabbing a collective 79 points across three racers, Natasha Chang, Noel Golding Jr and Ricardo Scott, as Cayman’s Gary Barrett took home 62 point to lead the group.

In the motorcycles, it was Guyana ahead as Stephen Vieira led fellow countryman Elliot Vieira, 68 points to 61. Jamaica filled out the rest of the top five with Robert McDonald, David Bell and Kyle Reynolds.