TAKING IT TO THE MAX

Nearly 80 cars turned out for the 51st running split into four heats, all of which qualified and raced on the Saturday. 2021 runner up Max Esterson returned to go one better than the previous year and started in the best possible way after he was victorious in Heat 1, but only after holding back a barrage of attacks from newly crowned National Formula Ford champion Jordan Dempsey and 2020 champion Joey Foster, with Morgan Quinn and Team Canada Scholarship rookie Kevin Foster completing the top five.

In Heat 2, defending champion Jamie Sharp and two-time champion Niall Murray may have started on the front row together, but they ended up tangling mid-race at Surtees which forced Sharp out and into the Progression races, while Murray had to battle back to seventh. Up top, it was three-time champion Joey Foster that topped the heat at the flag, with Lucas Romanek and Team USA Scholarship’s Thomas Schrage on the podium from David Parks and William Lowing.

Robbie Parks took a surprise Heat 3 pole but ended up dropping to fifth in the end in the two-part, red flag-affected race, as Ammonite Motorsport’s Shawn Rashid showed his potential to be the dark horse of the Festival with a win by almost three seconds ahead of Irish youngster Jordan Kelly, Abdul Ahmed, the returning Michael Eastwell and the aforementioned Parks in the top five. The heat was marred, however, by a titanic accident between Matt Rivett and Tom McArthur, the former’s Van Diemen launching off the back of McArthur’s car and barrel rolling into the Paddock Hill Bend gravel. While McArthur was out of the race but able to continue in the competition, Rivett’s car was sadly written off. Matt himself was shaken up in the incident and went to hospital for precautions, but was discharged several hours later.

The fourth and final heat allowed David

McCullough to show his skills with pole position and the heat win, holding off outgoing National champion Chris Middlehurst, Brandon McCaughan, Jeremy Fairbairn and the everimpressive Alan Davidson in his classic Mondiale.

Sunday began with the pair of Progression races and one of the drives of the event, as Sharp came from 14th to the lead and the win, heading Cam Jackson, Dan Rene Larsen, Gilles Cloet, Jonathan Miles and 1991 Festival winner Marc Goossens as the qualifiers. The second Progression race put partners Peter Daly and Lorna Vickers on the front row together but soon enough made way for the six-pack of qualifying drivers, those being race winner William Ferguson of Team USA, Team Canada’s Jake Cowden, New Zealand’s Driver to Europe James Penrose, Megan Gilkes, Tom McArthur and Oliver Chapman.

On to the semi-finals, where Foster’s faster Heat win gave him pole over Esterson, but he dropped to fourth as Esterson took over the lead. Despite Foster working his way back to second, he couldn’t pass Esterson who punched his ticket to the Final, while Dempsey, Schrage and Romanek completed the top five qualifiers. Meanwhile, Shawn Rashid threw away his chance to win Semi-Final 2 by spinning off at Clearways on the opening lap and after the brief safety car, Eastwell worked his way from third to first and stayed there to line up on the Grand Final grid on the front row, joined in the top five by Middlehurst, David McCullough, McCaughan and Fairbairn.

The Historic Final would be contested for the Brian Jones Memorial Trophy for the second year in succession with Cam Jackson on pole and after initially losing the lead to Alan Davidson, Jackson hit the front, only to be beautifully dummied by McArthur at Druids to drop behind both him and Davidson. However, McArthur then spun away the lead at the same corner a couple of laps later, but a red flag was a saving grace which incredibly kept him as leader to restart from pole. Even though Tom pulled away on the second start, Jackson eventually closed him down and slipped past in the closing stages and charged away to clinch the Historic final win, with McArthur settling for P2 and Davidson just a fraction behind in P3.

A slightly chaotic Last Chance Race had a late red flag after several cars dropped by the wayside, but on the two lap sprint for the restart McArthur made up for missing out on Historic glory by clinching the victory and passage to the Grand Final, ahead of Norwegian Formula Ford champion Christer Otterstrom, Historic winner Jackson, Pascal Monbaron, Penrose and Gilkes. The 30 car field was now set for the Grand Final…

While we’d love to mention that it was a thrilling 20 lap contest as it had been in 2021, unfortunately the 2022 edition didn’t quite play out that way. The start of the race was promising with pole man Esterson once again leaping into the lead with Foster and Dempsey immediately on his tail, but no sooner had the first lap been completed then a seismic downpour occurred which completely saturated the circuit in seconds. The race was forcibly red flagged and counted back to the order after two complete laps, and after waiting for some 15 minutes for track and weather conditions to improve, the event stewards advised the clerk of the course that neither had happened and racing sadly couldn’t continue.

Therefore, for the first time ever in its history, the Formula Ford Festival had to declare a result via an enforced curtailment due to the conditions. It meant that Max Esterson was declared Festival champion for 2022, ahead of Foster in second place and Dempsey in third. While it isn’t the finish any of us wanted, Esterson was still a deserved winner after his incredible pace all weekend – now we wait to see what the 2023 edition has in store.