For someone who began competing at national level only this year, Ryan Anderton has much to celebrate following the conclusion of the 2010 Formula Kart Stars (FKS) Championship – as a superb end to the season saw the Somerset speed demon brilliantly establish himself amongst the 15 best MSA British Cadet class drivers this country has to offer.
Ryan has been karting for less than two years, but off the back of a run of impressive outings around his ‘local’ circuit in the Clay Pigeon Club Championship in 2009, the Glastonbury-based hotshot took the brave step of graduating to FKS for the 2010 campaign. There, he would boldly pit himself against some 50 rivals constituting the very crème de la crème of young British driving talent in the same series as had first set a certain Lewis Hamilton on the fast track towards future superstardom, and one that now boasts the prestigious official backing of both the youngest-ever F1 World Champion and also the sport’s highly-influential ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone.
Whilst early meetings were understandably something of a struggle, come the midway stage Ryan was beginning to show signs of genuine improvement, and buoyed by having registered his best national finish to-date with a magnificent seventh place in the preceding round at Three Sisters near Wigan, the 11-year-old headed into the Ellough Park Raceway finale sitting 17th in the standings and eager to snare a top 15 spot come the end of the weekend, and the seeded number for 2011 that would accompany it.
“The aim was to try to score the points we needed to get a number for next year,” he revealed, confessing to feeling optimistic if not over-confident about his chances. “To do that, I knew I had to keep focussed and keep my momentum and confidence up. I had tested at Ellough before but never raced there; it’s a nice track, quite sweeping, and I enjoy driving it. It took me about a day to get used to it in testing, but after that, we were on the pace.”
Ryan would maintain that form into the race weekend, qualifying an impressive fourth in his group on Saturday – just over three tenths of a second shy of the outright benchmark – before two solid heat performances yielded a brace of fifth places, although a five-second penalty for having inadvertently hit a cone dropped him to eighth in the second of them, leaving the St. Dunstan’s Community School pupil to begin the final from P6.
“It’s quite tough being on the outside line at Ellough,” he explained, having the misfortune to find himself in just such a position for all three of his races that day. “You can lose a lot of ground at the start because you just get a train of karts going past on the inside, and I generally lost at least two places on that side of the grid.
“In the final, again a lot of drivers went up the inside, but some of them went into the first corner a bit too ‘hot’ and I was able to get the cut-back on them on the exit. After that it was quite a ‘yo-yo’ race, up-and-down all the time and I was continuously either gaining or losing places. We had good pace, though, and I had a good feeling in the kart and was quite pleased to finish tenth in the end. We knew we had to finish the race, so we didn’t risk anything and just took it all in our stride, really. We did what we had to do.”
His third top ten finish of 2010 in FKS, even more significantly still, Saturday’s outcome kept Ryan on-track to accomplish his stated top 15 championship goal – but after qualifying an excellent fourth again on Sunday, sadly this time, neither the heats nor the final would play out according to-plan.
“In heat one, I came out of the first corner in sixth place,” he recounted. “I kept gaining ground, but then a couple of laps later I just went over the kerb slightly and dropped a wheel onto the grass, which sent me spinning. I fell a long way down the field, which was very frustrating because I knew we needed the points.
“I was kicking myself for my mistake and had to try to get back up there again. As Ellough is such a tight track, that makes it one of the hardest circuits to overtake at I would say, and you have to always plan ahead – if you think you won’t be able to attack the driver in front into one corner, you have to aim for the one after that instead. I caught the pack back up again and passed three or four of them and ended up 15th.”
The second heat resulted in a far happier seventh place, but after beginning the all-important final from 16th, the Fusion Motorsport star found himself tagged soon after the starting lights had gone out, pirouetting down to the rear of the order once more, from where try as he might, he could recover to just 19th at the chequered flag. Initially, it appeared that it was not enough.
“When I came in, I was quite gutted,” he reflected. “I went back to the motorhome and my mum and dad said I might have made it, but I might not – it was that close that we didn’t know. Then a couple of days later, when I left school and got into the car with my mum she told me I had got 15thin the championship. I was so happy, I was jumping around all over the place and we all just celebrated like mad!”
A tremendous achievement up against fierce opposition, Ryan unquestionably has every right to feel very proud of his progress indeed. Admitting afterwards to having had to continually shift the goalposts in 2010, the West Country ace now acknowledges that they might just have to shift again in 2011 as he prepares to go onwards and upwards.
“It feels really special to get a number at the end of my first year in FKS,” he summed up, grin wider than the proverbial Cheshire Cat. “We hadn’t been expecting that at all – we were aiming for a top 30 finish back at the beginning of the season! Then when we started climbing up the table we thought the top 25 might be possible, and going into the last meeting sitting 17th, we knew we had to go for the top 15. Looking ahead, I think most of the top ten this year are moving up a class for next year, so the aim in 2011 has to be top five.”
On the basis of exceeding expectations so dramatically in 2010, you would have to say that looks far from out-of-reach.
