Date: 01.08.10
Jersey racing driver, James Walker, took two top ten finishes at
Brands Hatch this weekend in round seven of Superleague Formula by
Sonangol. A difficult qualifying session left James with a lot of
work to do but he kept his cool and delivered two good finishes on
Brands Hatch's famous Grand Prix Circuit.
"We went the wrong way with the set-up for the qualifying session,"
said James, after finishing an uncharacteristic eighth in his
group. "We went back the other way for the races today and the car
was great but unfortunately a bad qualifying result leaves you on
the back foot for the rest of the weekend."
James got a good start in race one this morning, passing four cars
before the pit stop. A problem with the right rear tyre
delayed him in the pits and he had to go back out and re-take two
of the cars he had already passed. He took the chequered flag
in 10th place and reported that the car shouldn't be changed at all
for race two as it was handling just right.
Starting from eighth in race two, James had a tricky lap one as his
tyre temperatures were a little low. He lost a couple of
places and got stuck behind Chris van der Drift for a large part of
the race. The Kiwi driver went on to have a big accident that
caused the race to be red-flagged around ten minutes before the
end. James crossed the line in 10th place.
"If we had had the car we had today for qualifying then this would
have been a very different weekend," said James. "Nevertheless it
has been great to race on the GP track at Brands and I think my
Formula Ford experience really helped me to overtake during today's
races. I feel like I haven't raced in the UK for ages so it
was good to have the home support and to see a lot of faces that I
haven't seen for a while."