Kieren Clark happy to settle for 7th at Brands
Brands Hatch Indy circuit saw a character building weekend for Kieren Clark, the up and coming 18 year old Royston based driver, in the highly competitive Formula Renault BARC series, coming away with 9th and 7th places.
A close fought qualifying for round 9 saw Clark end up in 8th on the grid, with a best time of 46.64sec, 0.367 seconds away from pole, and less than a tenth away from the top 5.
The race took place later in the day, and some very eager starts saw KC falling back to 11th. With a massive job on his hands to catch back, he was pushing hard and quickly took back places, only for the red flag to be shown.At the restart KC was placed 9th. Again, some eager starting around him saw Clark drop to 12th in the first lap of the revised 12 lap race. Some quick and determined opening laps saw KC make up the lost positions at the start and pushing hard right to the chequered flag, with some fantastic close racing, seeing the cars scream along the pit straight with the nose of KC’s No 29 car tucked right under the gearbox of Davies’s car. With no way through, a hard fought 9th place was the result.
Qualifying for round 10 was held Monday morning. With some unfortunate luck, Kieren suffered from not getting a clear track and qualified 9th position. With only 4 hundredths of a second covering the next 2 places, once again demonstrating how close the Formula Renault grid is. The start again saw Kieren loose places, but determinedly make them back up with some good overtaking manoeuvres on the tight circuit. 2 red flag incidents saw the race shortened to 8 laps. With KC 11th on the reformed grid, he quickly made up one place and was on a charge. With one lap to go KC brilliantly passed Dittmen on the run up to Clearways, making it stick in the run down to the straight. Drama on the last corner of the last lap saw a coming together of 2nd and 3rd place cars which elevated KC to a 7th place finish, retaining 10th place in the drivers points standings..
Kieren commented, “I’ve suffered from the starts all weekend and had to really work hard to get back. I’ve pushed as hard as I can and I’m a bit gutted that 9th place was the best we could do, but getting the 7th helped the championship points.”
“The final race, after all the red flags was ace, I managed some great passing moves and really got into the groove, with the car feeling great, but just not enough time to make any more of it.”
“Qualifying this morning was a nightmare, every time I got into space something happened in front of me, I just couldn’t get a clear run, its really frustrating. “
Diana Clark, 3K’s team principal stated, “he worked really hard for both races, and due to some dubious starts had to really drive well to get the 9th place on Sunday. The 7th today was a bonus, but always a shame when it’s at the expense of someone else’s misfortunes. He is understandably disappointed with the weekend but I think he did well, worked hard and kept his cool to make the best of a difficult situation.”
Tony Clark, team manager was positive, “on a track known for not being easy to overtake, Kieren did well to make his places back up. We had the car set fairly well. Next it’s the fast Thruxton circuit, where unfortunately funds didn’t allow us to attend the test session earlier in the month and we know that will be a struggle as its straight into qualifying.”
The next Round of the Formula Renault BARC series will be at Thruxton, Hampshire on September 16th with qualifying and a single race on the same day.
