He might have been out-of-luck rather more often than he would have liked in 2010, but for highly-rated young Sale-based karting star Jay Goodwin, one thing is for sure – by establishing himself amongst the leading six drivers in the country at Mini Max level, it was the year when he truly came of age.
A front-runner season-long in the Lewis Hamilton and Bernie Ecclestone-backed Formula Kart Stars Championship (FKS), Jay headed into the Ellough Park Raceway finale knowing he needed to beat closest rival Zubair Hoque to move up a position into fifth out of the 30 competitors in the standings. Despite doing everything right all weekend, sadly fortune was not on his side.
“Going into the meeting I felt nervous, because I really wanted to finish in the top five in the championship,” he confessed. “I’d never raced at Ellough before, but it didn’t take long to get used to and I was fast pretty much straightaway. I really enjoyed driving it – I’d say it’s probably the second-best track I’ve been to after Whilton Mill.”
For all that he was right on the money in terms of raw speed around the narrow Suffolk circuit, Jay’s qualifying charge on the opening day was stymied by traffic as he found his efforts to set a quick lap time repeatedly and frustratingly scuppered, leaving him only 11th but confident that he had a lot more pace than he had been able to show. From there, the Ashton-upon-Mersey hotshot advanced to seventh and ninth in his two heat races.
“As Ellough is so tight-and-twisty, that makes it a really tough circuit to overtake at, so I was fairly pleased with those results,” he mused. “There’s no slipstream to take advantage of, because there are a lot of corners and not many straights. I began the final sixth, and it’s not very grippy and a bit dangerous on the outside line, because it puts you very close to the rumble strip through the first corner.
“I managed to lose only one place at the start with being on the outside, and I worked my way into fifth with about a third of the race left and then just stayed there. I kept pushing to try and catch the two drivers ahead of me in third and fourth, but although they were just seven tenths of a second or so in front, because everyone was so evenly-matched I was only catching them by about four hundredths a lap. I was happy enough to finish fifth in the end, and it kept me on-course for fifth in the championship, too.”
Unhindered by traffic the following day, third spot in qualifying allowed the 13-year-old to show his true colours – but despite maintaining that excellent form throughout his two heats, Hoque was one step further ahead still.
“The heats went very well, but not well enough to get me where I wanted to be in the championship,” Jay rued. “I finished second and third, which normally you would think would be enough – but Zubair won them both... I actually got into the lead at the start each time, but I couldn’t hold Zubair off because we had set-up problems which meant I was struggling for grip slightly, and he was able to be just a little bit more consistent than me.
“That left me second on the grid for the final, but someone cut across the corner at the start which caused a bit of chaos, because it slowed us all down and I kept getting hit from behind. That dropped me to fourth, but I had recovered to third when Sam Marsh passed me and ran me wide, which dropped me into the pack. I even fell as low as ninth at one point, I think, but I fought my way back through to seventh in the end. I was very upset about that, because I knew it wasn’t enough to get fifth in the championship.”
Missing out by a mere ten points once everything had been tallied up, the North Cestrian Grammar School pupil actually out-scored Hoque overall – placing fourth, in fact – but slipped behind when the dropped scores system that FKS employs was implemented.
As he looked back afterwards over a campaign of highs-and-lows – invariably proving to be on the leading pace and with podium finishes at Whilton Mill, Glan Y Gors and Three Sisters near Wigan amongst the indisputable highlights – Jay acknowledged that whilst he was disappointed by the sheer amount of bad luck he seemed to attract, he was nonetheless more than satisfied with his own performances, and for good reason.
“We’ve been on it right the way from round one at Rowrah, where I qualified fourth, and then I put it on pole at Whilton Mill,” he recounted. “We just kept it consistent, and everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve never been more than about two tenths of a second off the fastest.
“The biggest highlight of all was probably Wigan; it’s hard to drive through the pack round there, because whenever you pass someone, they can usually just tow straight back up to you again. We had a really bad qualifying and the heats weren’t great either, but we managed to bring it all back in the final – I really enjoyed that. I scored the most points of any round all season there.”
Having hitherto been something of an Achilles’ heel in his armoury, Jay’s qualifying form in 2010 has generally been first-class, too. Four times in 12 rounds he lined up inside the top three, and he failed to make the top eight on the grid on only three occasions, averaging sixth or seventh.
There was also a Lewis Hamilton ‘True Grit’ award for gaining a staggering 20 places from the very back of the pack to tenth at the chequered flag in the final at Rowrah, after being unceremoniously taken out in both of his heats – whilst having achieved a rostrum finish on the first day at Glan Y Gors, the second day promised to be just as good if not even better, before someone tampering with the fuel in the engine of his Evolution Racing kart left the Matrix and Joe Bloggs-backed ace out-of-the-reckoning before the final had even begun.
“I’m still angry about that, because I’m convinced I would have won on the Sunday,” he concedes. “I was fourth on the grid, and because of how the start played out, the driver who inherited my slot ended up leading by a mile after the first corner. If that had been me, I’m sure I could have pulled away...
“I led both of the heats at Rowrah on the Sunday and was fired off in both – if it hadn’t been for that, I would have had an extra 100 points there, too. That would have put me on pole position for the final, as well, and I wouldn’t have had to battle my way through from the rear of the field.
“I use my head a lot more now than I used to, and I’ve learned quite a lot about being at the front of the pack and leading races and how to defend – before I could always chase other drivers really easily, but I found it harder to lead. I think qualifying has actually been one of my strong points this year, too – I’ve had to work hard on that side of things. Evolution kept sending me out on my own in testing, with no-one to chase, and made me do lap-after-lap until I was consistently fast.
“Considering the horrible luck we’ve had, I think overall we’ve had quite a good season; without everything that went wrong, we could probably have finished inside the top three and maybe even won the championship – and I definitely feel I’m a much more complete driver now for it all.”
