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!
