Race Report - Irish Vee

Brands Hatch 28/9-7-7

The team enjoyed a successful weekend at the historic Brands Hatch circuit with Ken Elliott leaving the track as the new leader of the FDS Formula Vee championship. Elliott put in a fantastic performance to take a win and a second place, while his chief rivals struggled to get to grips with the unique circuit.

Qualifying was dry and Elliott duly took pole in the middle part of the session, his JH004 working well around the sweeping bends of Brands Hatch. Unfortunately his second best lap time was only good enough for second place but he wouldn’t have to worry about that until Sunday.

The start of race one was when Elliott made his only mistake of the weekend but it was a crucial one. Mis-selecting gear dropped him to third on the opening lap and with overtaking extremely hard around the 55-sec lap, Elliott was at a serious disadvantage. He calmly moved up to 2nd and so began the tough battle for the lead.

Despite applying bucketloads of pressure and drawing alongside on a number of occasions, he simply could not find a way around the lead car. A disappointed Elliott was forced to settle for second place but rather than letting his head drop he immediately began to focus on the race the following day, a race he knew was going to be tough as he started off pole.

Elliott made sure there was no repeat mistake on Sunday afternoon and produced a lightning start that rocketed him into the lead by Paddock hill bend. Having sat behind the leader for the majority of the race the day before, he knew this race was his. He placed his Dunlop JH004 exactly where his opponents needed to be and managed to get a break just as the red flags appeared.

The restart would be a 5 minute dash to the flag and Elliott roared into the lead yet again while all hell broke loose behind him. After a hefty shunt at the exit of druids, two laps into the restart and a subsequent crash at paddock the red flags flew once again and Elliott was awarded the much deserved win.

“The car works really well on the UK tracks and we changed very little during testing on Friday. I was extremely disappointed yesterday and everyone taking the piss out of me just fired me up more! We had the car working well at the last round at Mondello and hopefully we can maintain this momentum into the next championship round” said Elliott

The next championship round is at Kirkistown but before that Elliott will be setting his sights on the Phoenix Park, where he hopes to reproduce the form that saw him win Sundays race last year.