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A
difficult weekend at Donington for Kieren Clark, the 19 year old racer from
Royston, Cambridgeshire, resulted in finishes of 13th and 16th
in rounds 5 and 6 of the Formula Renault UK championship, with round 6 watched
live by hundreds of thousands of ITV4 viewers.
Testing
before the event did not go to plan for the Apotex Scorpio driver, and
qualifying on Saturday morning proved to be more of an exploratory session,
which unfortunately meant that the all important tyre lap was not capitalised,
ending 15thth place,
and two hundredths of a second back to Sho Hanawa, in 16th. For the second
qualifying session, KC again ended in 15th position, one tenth in front of Sho.
on the grid. As usual in the Formula Renault UK series,
the times were so close, especially in the Apotex Scorpio team, with only seven
hundredths of a second to Kieren’s mate Josh Scott in 13
“We
left our qualifying laps to the end of the session”, explained KC, “but after a
red flag stopped the session near the end, it all got a bit manic as everyone
tried to squeeze a time from the last few laps. I seemed to be getting lots of
understeer from the tyres and I couldn’t get the car to turn into the apex.”
After
a reasonable start in race 1, KC slotted behind Pentus and kept the gap to a
few tenths but was never able to mount a serious challenge, but did benefit
from some drive through penalties for jumped starts at the head of the grid,
and ended his race 13th.
“I
didn’t get the best start as my car just started to creep, and I could see the
marshal watching me, so I covered the brakes just as the lights went out and
took a fraction to get going. I didn’t loose any places, but had hoped to make
a better start.”
The
second race of the day was again live on ITV4 and with light rain falling, the
conditions looked to be difficult. A poor start relegated KC to 17th
and then on lap 2, a move down the inside of Armour got onto a damp part of the
track and lack of grip relegated KC another 2 places to 19th. Over
the next few laps some steady driving allowed KC to get back into contention
and benefit from others mistakes on the greasy off-line track. Some fast sector
times put him back in contention with Blomstedt towards the end of the race,
and close enough for a last corner lunge, which didn’t come off, but did make
some entertaining TV coverage.
The
next Rounds of the Formula Renault UK championship are at Thruxton on May 17th
and 18th, as part of the British Touring Car Championship weekend,
with big crowds expected, along with live ITV4 coverage on the Sunday, of the
afternoon’s events.
Log
on to Kieren’s website at www.kierenclark.com
to enter a fantastic money-can’t-buy prize for the next BTCC touring car round.
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