Brands Hatch had seemed an age in coming. The well-attended Formula Ford Festival is always a great event at which to end the season and this year was to be no different. With 4 rungs of the Caterham motorsport ladder, sports prototypes, Formula 3 and, of course, Formula Fords all competing over the 3 day meeting, the racing promised to be fast and furious.

Testing on the Wednesday was extremely wet with a dry line emerging only in the last session of the day. As expected, Car 54 was fast on the tight, short Indy circuit at this most famous of all UK venues. I was confident that the laptimes I was putting in would be sufficient to put my weary car near the front of the grid - crucial on such a tight track where overtaking is very difficult.

For the first time this season, we weren’t faced with monsoonal conditions at any point over the weekend - instead enjoying clear, blue autumnal skies throughout. However, disaster struck in qualifying (not for the first time this season). A coolant leak through and failing rear brakes were compounded by a timing transponder failure - meaning Car 54 did not post a single laptime in the session. Fortunately, the timekeeper spotted the failure and had the wherewithall to start timing manually, so that I wouldn’t have to start from the back of the grid.

I posted a 55s981 which was only good enough for P11/23 - hugely frustrating. On the upside, being widely accepted that the margin of error for manual timing is about 0.2s, my laptimes were probably competitive with the front runners, being 0.2s down on pole. I would, however, have to battle my way through a very closely matched pack to score maximum points.

Race 1

I got the perfect launch at the start of the first race - unfortunately, so did pretty much everyone in front of me and so I had only gained one place by Turn 1 - the fearsome Paddock Hill Bend. Forced wide through Paddock by cars on the inside, I managed to battle over to the defensive line into Druids, where the pack began to thin out through the funnel effect down towards Graham Hill Bend.

Realising I was being held up by an unusually slow Rob Vissers, I went for an audacious pass on both Amit Patel and Rob around the outside of Druids and, amazingly, managed to make it stick and jumped two places. Shortly afterwards, whilst tucked up behind Sid Woolett, Magd Mohaffel and Mark Blackburn came together around Paddock in front of us and flung each other into the gravel and out of the race. Another two places gained - I was now in P6…

Sid is a very canny racer for all his modesty and, although slower through most of the bends than I was, his defensive positioning was perfect allowing no way through. Knowing that I would probably get through sooner or later, Sid made an excellent tactical decision (from his point of view) to back me up into the chasing Amit. I soon had my mirrors full of Amit’s black and yellow nosecone and lost time defending my position Sid used this opportunity to pull away.

I defended from Amit for lap after lap, until he eventually got through out of Paddock Hill after he took a slower line in and got the faster exit. An epic battle then ensued between the three of us, Amit getting the better of Sid on the penultimate lap. I picked up Sid’s tow on the charge to the line on the final lap and drew alongside as we crossed the line. Sid had pipped me by .059s - about 2 feet… I finished the race in P7/23 and only 8s312 behind the winner, Mark Figes.

Race 2

I started race 2 from P7 and got another flyer, taking Sid before the entry to Turn 1. We went four abreast into the Druids Hairpin and the field began to thin out. Andrew Atherton, in a career high position at this, his local track, managed to pull off a fairly suicidal pass on me around the outside of Paddock Hill bend. Unfortunately, Andrew was quite slow around the rest of the track and proceeded to hold me up allowing a charging Paul Fleury to sneak up and steal a position off me.

Together, we battled to find a way past Andrew, who to his credit did a very good job of holding the defensive line. This led to a couple of comings together between Paul and me as Paul had to throw out the anchors hard whilst I was about 2 inches off his back bumper; although fortunately the damage was minimal.

My Scuderia TT teammate, Paul Lund had crept up to the back of me and we diced with each other for several laps before he dropped away. Richard Carter span out from P2 and was thrown in the mix. The last few laps were a frantic mix of attacking Paul Fleury and defending from both Paul Lund and Richard Carter. At the end of the 20 minute race, I crossed the line in P6/23 and only 6s146 off the lead.

Although disappointing that I hadn’t got on the podium at this final meeting, it had been a reasonable weekend, with 27 out of a possible 40 championship points.