Ash Hand found himself unexpectedly fighting a war on two fronts when Formula Kart Stars (FKS) resumed for its penultimate outing of 2010 at Three Sisters near Wigan – but he nonetheless artfully rose above the adversity to beat the best in the country and firmly lay claim to the same crown as no less than Lewis Hamilton once won.
Ash headed into the weekend – the ninth and tenth rounds of the campaign in a hotly-fought championship that boasts the prestigious official backing of both Hamilton and influential F1 commercial rights-holder Bernie Ecclestone – in possession of a healthy advantage in the drivers’ standings, but palpably in no mood merely to race for points.
“All weekend, I just wanted to win!” he confessed. “People were telling me I needed to look at the championship – and in the back of my mind that’s what I’m doing – but I still want to win. That’s just my mindset – no matter what race or situation I’m in, I always want to win!”
It is just such an approach that had enabled the highly-rated young Nuneaton hotshot to emerge victorious six times in the opening eight rounds, but this time Ash’s task would be complicated somewhat by the fact that Super 1 Series leader Jack Marshall had entered the meeting in order to gain valuable track time ahead of his own championship showdown at the same circuit next month.
The Maple Park teenager reasoned that ‘if I came here to win, I should be able to win against anybody' – and pole position in qualifying on Saturday amongst the 22-strong Junior Max class field was a timely riposte.
“In the first heat I got pushed out wide at the start and fell to second,” Ash continued, revealing that to compound matters, he was battling a bug on the opening day. “I tried to overtake the leader, but he put me on the grass which dropped me back to fifth, and after I eventually managed to get past him, all-of-a-sudden he just came up the inside of me so fast, on the kerb and with two wheels on the grass! As I’ve got the championship to think about, I had to back out of it or we would have both ended up in the wall.” That left the P1 Racing ace just fourth at the chequered flag, behind his principal adversary, Jack Barlow – though by setting what was comfortably the race’s fastest lap, the 16-year-old proved he had the pace to prevail. A similar scenario in heat two left him P4 on the grid for the final, on the theoretically unfavourable outside line – but after Marshall graciously elected to relinquish his front row starting spot for the back of the pack so as not to risk interfering in the title fight, Ash was suddenly provided with an enviable sling-shot into turn one.
“I got a really good start and Barlow bogged down off the line, which allowed me to sweep around the outside and into the lead,” he recalled. “After that it all seemed quite straightforward, to be honest. All I had to do was keep consistent, which helped massively, and I never had to really worry about anybody else for the rest of the race. I always felt in control, and I knew I had more in my pocket if I’d needed it. I felt relieved more than anything else when I crossed the line to win – and it was certainly a confidence boost for the second day.”
A hugely impressive triumph – to the tune of more than five seconds – Ash’s dominant success was sealed by inch-perfect precision into every corner and metronomic consistency that was a veritable hallmark of his weekend, as he produced lap-after-lap within hundredths of a second of one another.
Physically better and mentally stronger the following morning – “In practice, I felt like I was driving the kart again instead of it driving me,” he quipped – the Voi Jeans-supported North Warwickshire College student went on to qualify a full quarter-of-a-second out-of-reach of his nearest opposition, with his second and third-best lap times still good enough for the top spot as he proved to be in a class all of his own.
From there, he checked out for a brace of impeccable heat results, intelligently breaking away at just the right moment on both occasions to drop his pursuers back into the pack and take the chequered flag three-and-a-half seconds to the good in the first of them and almost five seconds clear in the other, setting a new fastest lap less than a minute from the end to demonstrate what he could have done had he had cause to.
That was enough to earn pole for the final, in which he would similarly expertly soak up early pressure before edging away as those behind him got swallowed up and began squabbling over the scraps, wearing their tyres down in a futile effort to keep up. It was, frankly, peerless.
“As long as I kept hitting my apexes, it was all good,” he acknowledged. “For the first five or six laps I knew I had to hook everything up perfectly, which I did, and after that I was away. I was just in a comfort zone throughout, I think. It felt really good to do the double again, and it was another big confidence boost for me to beat Marshall, given how well he is doing this season.”
Triumphing by near-enough four seconds despite rarely having to push flat-out, Ash maturely maintained his concentration with nobody to really race against – the kind of situation in which it is all-too-easy to lose focus and make a mistake.
The fact that title rival Barlow came in only seventh was the cherry on top, and after overcoming the odds to not only defeat the Super 1 pace-setter but also notch up his seventh and eighth victories of an incredible season into the bargain, the Warwickshire speed demon is now preparing to head to Ellough Park Raceway in Suffolk for the decider revved up to finish the job off in style.
“It would have been nice to have had ten-out-of-ten,” Ash mused of his winning record, “but it can’t always be perfect – and this year has been close to perfect. When we switched from a Kosmic TonyKart derivative to a CRG chassis a few months ago, a lot of people thought it was a bad move – but we’ve proved them wrong and shown that the CRG is a brilliant product and that TonyKart is not the only option in Britain. I’d like to thank Mark Collings from CRG for his and the company’s continued support, and I’m just so happy to be able to repay them like this.
“I’m going to approach Ellough now in exactly the same way I did Wigan – I’m going there to win. We should be quick enough – we have been all year – but equally, if it comes down to a close situation in the race I won’t fight too hard, because I know I don’t need to win. I just need to keep my head.”
