Jay Goodwin travelled to Genk for rounds seven and eight of the Lewis Hamilton and Bernie Ecclestone-backed Formula Kart Stars (FKS) Championship with no prior experience of the demanding Belgian circuit – and left again having proven himself to be one of the quickest drivers in the field, with a superb top five finish under his belt and closer than ever to fulfilling his stated pre-season objective.
Arriving in Belgium sitting eighth in the Mini Max class title chase in the same series as had first set Hamilton himself on the fast track towards the big time, Jay was palpably looking forward to his maiden experience of racing abroad – something else to put on his burgeoning and ever-impressive career CV.
“I knew it was a long track from what I’d heard, and a very demanding drivers’ circuit,” reflected the highly-rated Sale-based star. “I’d been warned that I would need to be smooth and quick with my reactions all the way round the lap, because it can cost you as much as six tenths of a second every time you go off-line – and when I got there, I couldn’t wait to get out on it!
“I enjoyed driving it, and by the second practice session we were already quick enough to be up in the top five. We then went backwards a bit, but on the last session on Friday we were the fastest and everything felt good – and that obviously gave me a lot of confidence for the next day.”
Unfortunately, Jay’s qualifying efforts on Saturday were hindered by traffic, and whilst he was not far from the leading pace, with the time gaps between competitors being so tight, that equated to just 15th spot amongst the 27-strong field, the very crème de la crème of young talent at that level – but confidence intact, he entered his two heat races bidding to make amends. He achieved that and then some.
“In the first heat I dropped down to dead last at the start, because a driver ahead of me tried to go all the way around the outside into the first corner but ended up spinning backwards across the track and I couldn’t avoid him,” the 13-year-old recounted. “That left me about half the length of the back straight behind the pack, but because they were all having a bit of a dogfight I managed to battle my way back through. I got as high as fourth at one point before falling down to sixth again on the last lap, but I was still pretty happy with that.”
Justifiably so, and setting the fastest lap by two tenths of a second – almost three tenths better than that of the race-winner – was hugely encouraging for the remainder of weekend as Jay took the chequered flag barely seven tenths shy of fourth place to cap a truly brilliant recovery charge from all the way down in 19th.
Heat two would yield an identical result after the Ashton-upon-Mersey hotshot ceded ground early on – and whilst he mused that he could have tried to claim fourth or fifth, he reasoned that to do so would have meant pushing really hard at the risk of destroying his tyres, so he wisely and maturely settled for sixth and prepared to begin the final from P5.
“The end of the race was a real dogfight again, and I just got muscled out a bit on the last lap which dropped me down to 12th,” he rued. “I came back to tenth in the end, but given I had been running as high as fourth I wasn’t happy with the result to be honest.”
Still, competitive lap times once more demonstrated that Jay clearly had the pace as he agonisingly wound up just two seconds away from fourth at the close – but when he woke up on Sunday morning to discover that the heavens had opened with a vengeance, the ‘rainmaster’ sensed things were turning his way. A fan of driving in the wet and invariably strong in adverse and tricky climatic conditions, the North Cestrian Grammar School pupil went on to qualify an excellent second – but acknowledged that was not the best place to be starting at Genk...
“There’s lots of rubbish on the outside line, and even though you carefully warm your tyres up on the rolling-up lap, after the first corner alone they get wrecked and it takes you another lap to get them warmed back up again,” he explained. “That costs you even more when it’s wet and slippery out there like it was.”
Deemed to have jumped the start in heat one when the pole-sitter’s kart failed to pick up properly as the lights went out, Jay finished third on-the-road – barely half-a-second adrift of victory having been embroiled in a fraught three-way scrap for supremacy throughout, and with fastest lap to his credit again for good measure – before finding himself controversially penalised ten seconds for his alleged indiscretion. The second encounter was at least a distinctly more ‘boring’ affair, he confessed, that resulted in sixth place after being pushed out at the start and falling to tenth – leaving him P6 on the grid for the final.
“I got off to a very good start to move from sixth to fourth into the first corner,” recalled the Evolution Racing ace. “I looked across and saw a tiny little gap and just went for it! I had so much grip and moved into third down the back straight and managed to get into second later round the lap, but then I got hit into the hairpin, which left me with water in my engine and after that the kart just felt terrible because I had so little power and it wouldn’t pull out of the corners properly.
“Fortunately, the handling was still really good so I was able to hang onto a top five finish, which I was pleased about. I just had to make up for the loss of power through the corners, and I was doing the same kind of lap times as the others for most of the race, so if I hadn’t been hit I’m convinced I could have won.”
His understandable disappointment notwithstanding, Jay’s combined results saw to it that he scored a healthy haul of championship points and gained two positions to sixth in the standings, just one spot and five points shy of his fifth-placed goal back at the beginning of the year.
With the next meeting at Three Sisters near Wigan something of a local outing for him and around a circuit at which he has shone in the past and admits to being ‘100 per cent confident’, don’t be surprised to see the Matrix-backed speed demon atone for his Genk frustrations with a victory flourish – and achieve that stated goal without even needing to go into extra-time...
