Alex Lynn began his maiden season in the Formula Renault UK Championship in perfect style with a double win in the Formula Renault UK Championship Graduate Cup and two ninth place finishes overall.
The 16-year-old from Essex, in only his fifth car racing start, proved competitive all weekend at the high-speed Thruxton circuit – the fastest track in the UK.
In the first race, which took place in wet conditions, ex-karting ace Alex made an excellent start from ninth on the grid to run in seventh place. He then slipped back to ninth by the end as his car’s handling faded.
“It was a great start to the race,” he said. “I gauged it really well and although someone tried to squeeze me out, I hung on around the outside and made up places. Maybe the tyre pressures were a bit high, as it was tough to even keep it on the track at the end. Conditions were really tricky and everyone did exceptionally well not to crash – the driving standards were phenomenal.”
Lynn did a superb job to qualify his Fortec Motorsport machine in sixth place for race two. “That was a phenomenal session,” he said. “The car was really good and I managed to get the lap in with perfect timing before the rain started again.”
At the start of the race he moved into fifth place, but got elbowed back to ninth on the second lap and, after race-long battles, he finished in that position.
“I got a good start,” he said. “Then on the second lap I got very badly squeezed out and had to back off and lost places. As the race wore on the car really struggled for high-speed grip, which is something my team-mates found too.”
Nevertheless, Lynn finished the weekend with a strong record of two good finishes, and he is sitting pretty at the top of the Graduate Cup standings for young rookie drivers. “I’m definitely very happy with the weekend,” he said. “A good points haul and two Graduate Cup wins means that I’ve got the first box ticked for this season!”
Fortec Team Manager, Dave Moore, commented, “You have to say it was a really impressive start from Alex, better than a lot of rookies that have been with the team. He hardly put a foot wrong and he took a great points haul – I’m pleased he did so well.”
The Formula Renault UK Championship again enjoyed live coverage of its second race at Thruxton on ITV4, and was streamed live on itv.com. Action from the two races will be shown in the Motorsport UK series, which begins a 34-week schedule on April 27 with two repeats each week on ITV4 and one on ITV1. A further showing will be made on the Men & Motors channel. The Motorsport UK audience figure for Formula Renault UK in 2009 was 4,750,000.
Each episode can also be viewed through the ITV player on the ITV website - itv.com/catchup - for up to four weeks after the show has been aired.
