Race Report - Formula Vee

Kirkistown 26-7-8

Ken Elliott’s hopes of retaining his Formula Vee title were dealt a heavy blow last weekend, thanks to a poor start coupled with an untimely pace car that eventually stopped the after a mere 7 minutes of racing. The Dunlop JH004 sat 7th when the pace car came out for a bizarre incident that occurred between Fishermans and the chicane and while Elliott showed good pace early on, he was unable to use it as the race was abandoned due to ‘time constraints’.
Elliott’s qualifying was ruined by a problem with a wheel (it wasn’t tightened) and this left him a lowly 12th but this left little reason for major panic as the nature of the Kirkistown circuit lends itself to numerous overtaking opportunities. What did cause panic was Elliott’s poor getaway at the start of the qualifying heat which saw him slip down the order in the early stages.

This put Ken 8th on the grid for the main race which worryingly saw another poor getaway from the man who usually gains 1-2 places off the line. This saw him languishing back in 15th position but once again the Clondalkin man was not fazed and again began scything his way through the field. By the time the safety car was deployed, Elliott had elevated himself to 7th and had latched onto the back of what was becoming a 6 way fight for the number one slot, once again demonstrating the JH004’s good race pace.

Encouraged by his early progress, Elliott was confident that a decent result could be rescued from what had looked like a disastrous non points finish early in the race. Unfortunately he didn’t get the chance to battle his way through the train as officials saw fit to call the result after a substantially shortened race. Even though he was hugely disappointed, Elliott managed, as he always does, to extract positives from the farcical race: “We made a few adjustments to the car before this event and I think we may have turned a corner and hopefully unlocked even more pace from the car but we won’t know for sure until we get back to Mondello. The car felt great in the race and only for the start, we would have been battling for the lead when the race was called.”

Elliott now looks forward to the next event at Mondello Park on the 23rd of August where he hopes his initial impressions will prove correct. He will have to do so without the hands on assistance of the works team as Paul Heavey heads to Silverstone to take part in the 750MC Summer Festival meeting with the Leastone DH01. David Heavey also makes the trip, where he will race the UK spec JH004 with which Elliott displayed encouraging pace at Thruxton earlier this year.