Ash Hand has confessed that he only really went to his latest karting meeting with the objective of getting some more practice in before the main season gets underway – but such was his dominance and the brilliance of his victory in demanding, changeable conditions, that the young Nuneaton star now finds himself as the favourite to clinch the 2009/10 Winter Series crown.
After truly making his mark on the national stage in 2009, Ash has clear designs on British title glory in 2010, as he remains for a second campaign in the fiercely-contested Junior Max category. Heading to PF International for round three of four on the Winter Series schedule, his previous form around the Lincolnshire circuit was encouraging, with a stirring comeback that yielded third place – indeed, damn near victory – from dead last following an early knock, and the runner-up spot after a misguided engine change scuppered a likely triumph his most recent two results.
This time around, the 15-year-old intended to bring that third-second sequence to its logical conclusion – and, devastatingly quick in both the wet and the dry, he would do so with some panache.
“I was feeling pretty confident no matter what the conditions,” Ash confirmed, “and we were fast right from the off – on Saturday morning we were quickest by six tenths in the wet. The first heat was quite rough at the start, but I was expecting that. When I popped out of the first corner I was already into the top ten from 15th on the grid, and after that I just worked my way through.
“I think I just figured the track out quicker than anyone else, and within four laps I was at the front. When I overtook the leader I pushed him a little bit wide to make sure that I got a gap and could break the tow, and after that there was never really any pressure.
“I started the second heat 18th, and into turn one I got tangled up with a few other drivers. The pack split up quite quickly as a consequence of that, but I was almost seven tenths faster than anyone else and was able to come back through to seventh. That was a good result given that I had been down in 28th after the first corner...”
That it undeniably was, and it earned the Maple Park teenager pole position for the all-important final, by which time the heavens were having difficulty in making up their mind about quite what they wanted to do. Worse still, darkness was slowly beginning to fall over PF, but Ash made light of the situation to speed away at the start and quickly establish an advantage of around a second over season-long 2009 rival Matt Parry. And when the weather turned particularly nasty later on, the P1 Racing ace would truly show his class.
“I knew some corners were still wet, so on the rolling-up lap I had to check the circuit and figure out where was wet and where was dry,” he related. “It was very slippery in parts, and the rain kept beginning to spit and then stopping again, so I wasn’t really sure what it was going to do. I got into the lead at the start and built up a decent gap, but then it really did begin to rain, which made the race a whole lot more difficult, because the track was suddenly completely different and we were all out on slick tyres!
“My mechanic Sam was signalling to me from the pit wall to push, and as I did so the kart just slid away from me into the first corner – I thought I was going to be buried in the fencing, but fortunately I managed to hold it together. After that I had to go more slowly into every corner and find a different line according to where the grip was, and being the first driver to come across it all makes it even harder still, because you simply don’t know what’s around each turn.
“It takes at least a couple of laps to adjust to how snappy the kart has suddenly become and what the different corners are like, but once I got past that stage I was fine. I’ve done a lot of testing with slicks on a wet track, so I’m extremely confident in those conditions, and it was just really about finding out which bits of track were slippery and which had more grip. I knew I always had an extra little bit in-hand should I have needed it, so when it started to rain I was confident that the battle was over.”
It was, and with Ash visibly far more at ease in the treacherous and greasy conditions than the increasingly ragged and error-prone Parry, the outcome marked another comprehensive defeat of the reigning British Champion, the title that the George Eliot School pupil is aiming to claim as his own later this year. Incredibly, it also represented his maiden club meeting success at PF – and, he hopes, a sign of things to come.
Having travelled north ‘just with the intention of getting some more practice in for the British Championship’, Ash returned home again leading the points table – and with one Winter Series round now remaining, he admits, ‘we might as well try to win it’. The tables, it seems, could be about to definitively turn.
