Race Report - Irish Vee's

Kirkistown 31-3-7

Ken Elliott had a solid start to the 2007 season which was actually quite an impressive run, given the shambolic nature of the main race. Elliott managed to salvage 4th after a bad qualifying in a race that lasted a mere two laps.

A dry but cold track greeted the drivers for qualifying and after an encouraging days testing for Elliott on Friday, the Clondalkin man was looking forward to the first day of the 2007 season. Despite a fuel pressure problem on Friday morning, Elliott racked up many miles, increasing his knowledge of the JH004, which at this stage, is still quite limited due to the problematic end to 2006.

Elliott had a poor qualifying session by his standards as he failed to find the all important slipstream that is necessary for pole around the ultra fast Northern Irish track. This, coupled with mistakes on his best laps, resulted in a disappointing 4th row grid slot but given the nature of Kirkistown races, Elliott knew he could still fight for the win.

The race started as a 15-lap event but the red flag flew on the opening lap as some of the rookies got intimate with each other at the first corner. The sizeable shunt resulted in a Kershaw Motorsports Leastone being written off and the bizarre reduction of the race to just two laps. Given this outrageous situation, Elliott knew exactly what was required and an aggressive, no-holds barred start saw him rise to 5th on the first lap. An incident at Fishermans saw him up to fourth but the spinning car had allowed the top three to get a slight break.

Despite temporarily dropping to 5th, Elliott took no time in retaking the position and came home 4th at the end of the 2 lap event. “I’m happy with the result today. It was the best I could have hoped for given the situation and this is a better result than I achieved all last season! I’m really enjoying this car at the moment and we’re learning new things every time I go out, I can’t wait for Mondello next week.” said a pleased Ken Elliott after the race.

As Ken said Formula Vee are back in action next week (April 8th) at Mondello Park, and he will be looking to build on this encouraging, if extremely brief, performance.