Given the nature of the circuit and the fact that engine power is his greatest Achilles’ heel right now, nobody would have given Jack Hawksworth much hope of performing well in the third outing of the 2010 WSK Euro Series at Zuera – but not only did he perform well, he beat a multiple karting world champion for good measure.
The new IAME engine being run by Dutch outfit PDB Racing this year is undeniably a work in progress, but that progress is now beginning to come thick and fast. Off the back of a brilliant second place in the prestigious annual Trofeo Andrea Margutti and a wholly unexpected charge to the runner-up laurels in the rain in the opening round of the hotly-contested CIK-FIA European Championship at Sarno, again in Italy, Jack headed to southern Spain encouraged by recent results, but nevertheless anticipating a tough weekend.
“Power-wise, things are definitely improving,” explained the highly-regarded young Bradford star. “Zuera is not the sort of track we thought would suit us – it’s quite long and fast like Sarno and La Conca, where we struggled – but we were a lot quicker up the straights than we thought we’d be.
“Things went pretty smoothly throughout practice and we were there or thereabouts inside the top ten. Qualifying didn’t go to-plan, unfortunately; we’d had a few issues with the tyres, so we decided to take a gamble and go for something a bit different to see if it would help solve the problem. It didn’t work in the end, so we reverted back to what we already had for the heats.”
The set-up back-fire was evidenced by 25th spot in the rankings out of the 37 KZ1 class competitors, unaccustomed territory indeed. Undeterred, Jack got his head down in his two heat races to make storming starts both times from 17th and thereafter made his way through the pack well to claim seventh and eighth-place finishes – earning him a far more useful eighth on the grid for the pre-final and, he affirmed, ‘proving we definitely had more pace than we had shown in qualifying’.
“I made a pretty good start, but after that it wasn’t really the most exciting of races, to be honest,” he recounted of the pre-final. “I was stuck about a second behind Roberto Toninelli, and then at the end I had Jonathan Thonon coming up incredibly fast behind me – I didn’t even know he was there until a couple of laps to go. I had a look over my shoulder starting the last lap to check whether I would need to defend or not, and I saw him a fair distance away, so I didn’t think I would have to worry. I looked round again when I crossed the finish line, and he was literally right on my bumper! Luckily, we just had enough pace to keep him there...”
Thonon is indisputably the class benchmark, so to have him bearing down behind at a rate of knots – and practically breathing down Jack’s neck by the end – and still expertly hold the Belgian off was a superbly valiant effort under intense pressure.
Driving the wheels off his kart, the Cullingworth ace set a personal best in the middle sector of his last lap to ward his pursuer off, and his reward was fifth position in KZ1, a scant 16 thousandths of a second ahead of the three-time defending World Cup winner and former European Champion, and less than seven tenths adrift of third place. He would produce a similarly stirring performance later on in the grand final to seal an identical result and a second strong points-scoring finish in swift succession.
“I made a really good start and went up the inside into the first hairpin to take third,” recalled the 19-year-old. “Halfway through the first lap I dropped back to fifth, but what got us the result was the fact that we were reliable, we kept out of trouble and we had reasonable pace. Even though we knew in terms of outright lap time we were nowhere near the quickest, we were able to show good consistency all the way through and had the speed where we needed it. We could keep doing it lap-after-lap as some other drivers faltered.”
That much was borne out by the results sheet, as in the pre-final the Yorkshire speed demon was on paper the slowest of the top eight and yet still came in fifth – and in the grand final, only two of his KZ1 rivals produced best lap times slower than his, and they finished down in the double figures.
Invariably absolutely on the limit and with his laudable consistency proving that he is extracting every last ounce of pace and potential from the equipment at his disposal, Jack’s commitment and motivation are inarguable – and he is buoyant looking forwards now that there is plenty more where that came from.
“It was a solid weekend,” concluded the only British driver competing at the highest level on the international stage. “The result was definitely more than I had expected, and we actually came out of it looking rather handy. We’ve left two tracks we really thought we would struggle at – Sarno and now Zuera – with very respectable results.
“Genk in Belgium is next, and I think we should be stronger there; I’ve done a lot of laps there, the team are based fairly close to the circuit and things have really come on a lot since the start of the season. We were a mile off initially, but now we’re starting to get results. Reliability is still an issue that we have to work on and we do need to find a bit more pace – but if we can do that, I think we can be right up at the sharp end.”
