The first race of the season, new series, new car and a whole new experience! This season will see me race in the Scholarship Class in the MSA Formula Ford Championship Of Great Britain.
For 2009 I will be driving a Spirit WL06 prepared by Wrensport. The car itself has not got a good reputation, however Wrensport worked really hard over the winter to get the car up and running, and with such a small budget it was our only chance to make it on the grid for 2009.
Qualifying was tough as we had a suspension failure from use of the kerbs, somewhere we were really struggling as the car could not handle them, causing the suspension to break. The time posted was only good enough for 18th on the grid, which was not the way we wanted the start the season, however I kept my head up knowing that I had pace over the two cars in front.
However in race one, a great start saw me jump from 18th to 9th by the first corner! A stalled car and an incident helped in my favour, and a safety car was deployed. I did not expect to be able to maintain this position, I had very limited testing prior to the event, and had little knowldge of the track and car combination, however when the race restarted I was able to get a good restart where I was able to keep the Jamun prepared Mygale of Patrick Makenna behind me. Half way through Daniel Ericsson in the Kevin Mills Spectrum joined the battle, which saw me holding off two top team cars, which proved very difficult. I had to put the car in the right place at all times to ensure they could not get by. Our trio had managed to break away from the cars behind, so a minimum of 11th looked certain, however I was not going to give up a top 10 finish! With the race winding down to the flag I managed to hold my position, finsihing 9th overall, and 2nd in the Scholarship class, an amazing result considering our qualifying, budget and time we had before the first race!
Race two saw another good start however I was boxed in and could not really make any ground, and finished lap one in my starting position. However I managed to work my way up then field, working my way up to 3rd in class and 11th overall. To get 10th, and 2nd in class. I had to pass Jaffer in the Ray, which was proving difficult, however by sending him the wrong way into Old Hall, I managed to switch back onto the inside on the exit, taking the 10th spot on the last lap, which is where I finished. Again another amazing result!!
The last race goes on the fastest time in race 2, which saw us start 11th! This was a great suprise, and a great starting position on merit. This is where I stayed throuout the race, being involved for the battle for 7th with Josh Hill in the Jamun Mygale and also Chrissy Palmer in the Juno, however with good efforts from Ben Barker in the Fluid Van Diemen behind to get past, it made it difficult to make up ground, I managed to hold the the Fluid car, and finish 11th which was once again a very pleasing result for us, and the best weekend for a spirit in a long time!!
Many thanks to Wrensport for their hard work in preparing the car, I now look forward to Rockingham which is at the end of May, where hopefully we can be even stronger!