After the trials and tribulations of last week I am happy to report that the car has been repaired and is as good if not better than new. This is due to an enormous effort on the part of team owner Cliff Dempsey and car manufacturer Gavin Ray and I really cannot thank them enough for pulling out all of the stops! Unfortunately the cost of repair has to be borne by us even though the damage was caused by somebody else and this will have a detrimental effect on our operating budget but regardless of this the car had to be repaired so we just have to take it on the chin.

Now the plan is to head back to Oulton Park tomorrow (Weds 31st) for a full shakedown and system test just for peace of mind to ensure that everything is ok and then we will be ready for qualifying and the 1st race on Saturday and then two more races on Monday. We have a day off on Sunday so we will probably try to have some downtime and watch the Malaysian Grand Prix and possibly BTCC from Thruxton and the BSB from Brands Hatch.

I am now really looking forward to it all. I know that we haven?t done as much testing as we would have liked to and this is not ideal but circumstances have curtailed our plans. However I am still confident that all things considered we are in good shape and am thinking that all things being equal we should be able to put in a good performance. Obviously; as I have said before, we are not in anyway underestimating the quality of the opposition. Jamun Racing, who I worked for as a mechanic in 2008, hasn?t won the last five championships by accident and we have already seen in pre-season testing that they are as expected leading the way. But I also expect very strong challenges to come from Kevin Mills Racing driver Dan Cammish who had a great first season in the series last year and has a brand newly designed Spectrum chassis to pilot and from Fluid Van Diemen and Joe Tandy Racing who won 9 races last year with Josef Newgarden.

One things for sure, with 28 cars entered this weekend it?s going to be an eventful first three rounds and I am delighted to finally be taking part in this championship as its taken me 3 years of working really hard to get here. Now I fully intend to make the very most of my opportunity!

Our pre-season test programme continued this week with a 2nd day of practice at Oulton Park.

The first day here two weeks ago was at the championship launch day and to be honest the objective for that day was to make sure that everything was well with the new car, so we didn?t do anything too elaborate in terms of development work. Therefore the fact that we were quickest in the first session and 2nd quickest overall for the day was a real bonus.

For day two back at the same venue, which is also the circuit that hosts the opening event over the Easter weekend, we had a programme of set up changes to work through. The day was a mixture of weather conditions which suited us because the race weekend here is quite likely to be the same and we needed to get a good set up for both dry and wet.

With nearly all of the championship runners testing as well, we very happy to see that we were very much still on the pace and whilst we weren?t the quickest we were not very far off of it at all and this was despite not running new rubber all day and me not pushing to the limit because of the heavy traffic on the circuit particularly the amount of much slower cars. There was no point in taking unnecessary risks.

The final session of the day was almost completed when inexplicably my car cut out along the pit straight. At first I thought it could be fuel starvation but we now know that it was a minor electrical problem. I was directed off of the circuit by one of the marshals well away from the track itself on the grass. A yellow flag was waved and as there was literally only seconds remaining until the end of the session I remained in the car awaiting the recovery vehicle.

Then from nowhere I felt the jolt of an enormous impact striking my car. Sixteen year old Jake Cook who has moved up to this championship from the Ginetta Junior series had lost control going into the corner. Despite the waved yellow flag he was obviously still at full speed and such was his momentum that it carried him all the way over to my car which he hit extremely hard on the near side.

Firstly I am extremely grateful not to have been seriously injured. But the damage to my brand new car is going to be very expensive to put right and in my opinion was unnecessary

I don?t like criticising other drivers but from I saw of Jake over the course of the day he was clearly operating outside of his comfort zone and it would have been nice if his team had told him to be sensible and drive within his own limits. The team were using tyre warmers on his car, which are banned in Formula Ford, between sessions to keep his confidence up. They won?t be able to do this when he races. They also elected to miss the official launch and test day two weeks ago here in favour of private testing at Snetterton and now I understand why.

Yes I am quite understandably upset by this situation and we just seemed to have had a run of bad luck lately what with my hand infection, the withdrawal of a sponsor and now this!

Cliff and the team and car builder Gavin Ray will of course work extremely hard to repair the car in time for the first event just over a week from now but this is a real setback in terms of budget and with the car being out of action our pre-season test programme is curtailed at just two days. I do feel very aggrieved that this totally avoidable incident has happened and question the wisdom of allowing drivers that clearly are not ready being pitched in at this level!

I very much hope to report happier and more positive news in my next blog but for now its thanks to the team and the sponsors for all your support and fingers crossed that I will be on the starting grid on Easter Saturday!

I finally got behind the wheel of my new car with which we hope to compete this season in the MSA Formula Ford Championship of Great Britain and I have to say what a fantastic job Gavin Ray & Raysport have done building it and Cliff Dempsey have done preparing it and we musn’t forget the excellent engine supplied by Scholar Power.

The test yesterday was in fact the official MSA FF championship launch day organised by Racing Line who are to be commended for organsing the day and giving us all almost 3 hours of free track time. Motor Racing is so expensive that any financial help is most welcome especially in the current difficult economic climate.

The test took place at Oulton which will be the venue for the first three rounds of the championship over the Easter weekend in just over three weeks time (3-5th April). Over 20 drivers took part and almost all of the teams that will be entering the championship, including of course the multiple & current champions and my former employer Jamun Racing. I have to say I have a very healthy respect for Tony & James Mundy at Jamun and I owe them quite a lot for helping me to learn about this business. I also get on well with all my former colleagues who I used to work with. However that of course doesn’t mean that Cliff and I don’t want to do our very best to beat them but in the nicest possible way of course!

We couldn’t really have asked for a better start yesterday in taking the fight to Jamun and the other top teams with an unbelievable first run out of the box which saw us top the test times in the first session. This was amazing especially as we actually found a very small problem with the car after the session which would have cost us a few tenths.

Happy that we had a good base set up some changes were made for session two and although we weren’t fastest this time we were not very far off of it with the Jamun Mygale cars of Scott Pye and Josh Hill and the Kevin Mills Racing Spectrum, driven by Dan Cammish, all just ahead of me.

More changes were made for the third and final session of the day and i went even quicker; a whole second faster than my fastest morning time and only bettered late in the session by Scott Pye a couple of tenths quicker still. Phew!

So we were delighted to end the day 2nd fastest overall on the three combined sessions which considering this was our first run, and others had already done quite a bit of testing through the winter, made us all very happy.

But let’s not get carried away. We are keeping our feet planted firmly on the ground and we know that all of our rivals will be working very hard to beat us and we will be working just as hard to beat them and whilst testing all together like this gives some indication as to who the contenders will be its not until we have the first race that we’ll know for certain who they really are. But I for one cannot wait. I think this will be a great championship this year. There are some very good drivers entered and some very experienced teams as well and remember we are still sort of new kids on the block and still learning. But as long as I can find the rest of the budget that I need to complete the season (certainly not easy at the moment) then I like to think that our package will be somewhere near the sharp end. Only time will tell.

Now feet firmly back on the ground I am back in the workshop today building and preparing karts for Project One Racing and tomorrow I get to have some more fun by doing some component testing and develpment work out on our test track. I still love getting in a kart whenever I can and it doesn’t hurt in keeping me sharp for my Formula Ford racing so its not such a bad life is it??!!

I’ll be blogging again with another update soon!