Rounds 7 & 8 of the Dunlop MSA Formula Ford Championship of Great Britain took place at the Zandvoort Masters event in Holland last weekend. The event is a fantastic 2 day festival of motor racing drawing very large crowds who populate the sand dunes on this great circuit right next to the sea.

The headline event is the F3 Masters which has many famous names amongst its past winners including Lewis Hamilton and David Coulthard. But there is a lot more besides this on the bill and the highlight for many would have been the demonstration laps in the Red Bull F1 car by Sebastian Vettel.

I arrived at the circuit in the middle of last week as we had two 40 minute test sessions on Thursday. I was very encouraged by my performance in these where I topped the time sheets and hoped for a similar performance in qualifying the following day. Therefore I was extremely disappointed to be only 8th fastest out of 34, four tenths off of the pole time set by Josh Hill and over a second slower than the time I had set in practice the previous day.

A look at my data showed a definite downturn in performance of my engine from the previous day and the decision was made to replace this with a spare from our supplier Scholar Engines and I really like to thank them for all their help with this.

It was sunny and extremely hot when we lined up on the grid for race one at around 11.30am on Saturday. We?ve been getting very good sized grids so far this season in the British Championship but with the added cars from the Benelux series contesting the concurrent Eurocup event it was a real sight to see over 30 cars waiting for the off.

Pole man Josh Hill stalled at the start and there were one or two other incidents which meant we very quickly had a pace car out. I had made a good start moving up from 8th to 6th. When the pace car went in I was quickly on the attack and passed one of the Benelux drivers and Emille Bernstorf in quick succession moving up to 4th and onto the gearbox of Dennis Lind. Dennis proved to be quite a tough customer putting his previous knowledge of the circuit to good use but I eventually out braked soon after a 2nd safety car period. I was now on the back of Cook in 2nd who was very close to Dan Cammish in the lead. They were battling quite hard and with the knowledge that I was quicker than the pair of them I did have one good opportunity to have a run at both of them; but this would be risky! Therefore knowing that championship rival Scott Pye was behind and I had a safe third place in the bag I decided to settle for what I had which meant I would further stretch my lead at the top of the championship.

Race two was the last event of the weekend and eventually got underway just after 6.30pm on Sunday. Conditions couldn?t have been more of a stark contrast to those from race one. A drop in temperature and really heavy rain meant that there was a lot of standing water on the circuit. The organizers decided to shorten the race by one lap and give us all an extra acclimatization lap as many of us hadn?t driven this circuit in the wet before.

Hill made a good start from pole but I made an even better one moving up from my grid 6 starting position to 2nd place within the first half a lap. Hill ahead of me was pushing really hard and I thought it was too much for the terrible conditions and I was right. On lap two he put two wheels onto the painted white line at the edge of the track and spun. I hung well back not knowing where he was going to end up and Dennis Lind behind was able to get a run on me which I didn?t bother trying to defend. Having driven here before Dennis was obviously well versed with the wet line and was giving it ?ten tenths? which I wasn?t willing to with what was at stake. It paid off for him but you can see from the TV coverage that he has a couple of scary moments. I was in a safe 2nd place with Pye and Cammish well behind on the road and although I did come under pressure at times from the two leading Benelux runners as their finishing positions wouldn?t affect British Championship points I was not worried about this.

Eventually the race director put out a red flag at the end of the penultimate lap as several cars were stranded on the circuit having come to grief in the worsening track conditions. With over 75% of the race completed a result was declared. I for one wasn?t too sorry to see the end of this one. I was coming up on back markers at quite rapidly and this is always risky especially in the wet when visibility is poor.

So I didn?t get a win but a 3rd and then a 2nd place finish means that I have now had seven podium places in eight rounds contested and more importantly I have stretched my lead at the top of the championship table through consistency. But I know that there is still a long way to go and the competition is very good. We?ve now had five different winners and I?d like to congratulate both Dan Cammish (JTR) and Dennis Lind (Fluid) who added their names to that list this weekend and have proved how capable they are and of course I am sure that Jamun Racing will be eager to make amends for their disappointing weekend.

I?d like to say a massive thank you to Cliff Dempsey Racing and Scholar Engines for all their hard work on my behalf this weekend. Also thanks of course to Raysport and all of my sponsors including ScanDoc, Essex Gas, Bell Fruit Games, Baines Property Leasing, Miller Oils and Laserfiche who make all of this possible.

Next stop Castle Combe!

Scott

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