If there was a prize for the most-improved driver of the year in karting, then Ryan Anderton would surely be a leading contender, for having begun 2010 as a virtual unknown on the national scene, his latest outing ably demonstrated that the exciting young Somerset star is now capable of taking the fight to the very best in Britain.

After impressively establishing himself as one of the top 15 drivers in the country in the final standings of the Lewis Hamilton and Bernie Ecclestone-backed Formula Kart Stars (FKS) Championship, Ryan has embarked upon a winter programme that he hopes will prepare him to come out-of-the-blocks as a genuine front-runner in the MSA Cadet class right from the word ‘go’ next season.

In changeable wet/dry conditions at PF International in Lincolnshire, the Glastonbury-based hotshot was right on the money from the very start of the weekend in a fiercely-competitive, 32-strong field – and he would remain so for the duration of the meeting.

“I was feeling quite confident but not over-confident,” he revealed. “I really like PF’s sweeping layout, though it’s hard to learn and it took me four or five outings there to get it spot-on in the dry – and then it changes a lot in the wet, because the lines and braking-points are very different.

“As I hadn’t raced or even been out in the kart for a couple of weeks beforehand, it took a little bit of time to dial myself back in to begin with, but after that we got onto the pace fairly quickly, and I was in the top two pretty much all the way through practice.”

Happy whatever the weather – having proven very quick indeed in a club meeting warm-up at PF for the national Super 1 Series there the previous month, running as high as second in tricky conditions up against a high calibre of opposition – Ryan began his opening heat race on a wet circuit from 19th.

“At the start, some drivers went into the first corner too ‘hot’ and ran wide, so I was able to gain a lot of places there,” he recounted. “I did have to swerve around one of them pretty quickly when he suddenly stopped in front of me, though! I ended the first lap ninth, which I was really quite surprised about, and after that I just worked my way further up from there.

“Our pace carried Dan Ticktum and I away from the rest of the pack; I was behind him on the last lap and tried to make a move, but he defended really well and left no room for me to get past. There was potentially a move going into the last corner, but it was really tight and had I tried one, it could have caused both of us to go off, and I obviously didn’t want that. It’s not as important to go for the win in a heat race as it is in the final, so I was quite happy to settle for second place.”

A mature approach belying his tender age of just 11, the fact that Ryan finished right in the wheeltracks of a rival who had started some 15 places higher up the grid than he had spoke volumes. With damp patches remaining and rendering the track surface greasy in heat two, the St. Dunstan’s Community School pupil performed miracles on slick tyres to vault from 15th to fourth on the first lap alone – outstanding starts being something of a feature of his day – and he ultimately took the chequered flag a superb third, meaning two mid-grid starting slots had yielded a brace of brilliant top three finishes.

“The third heat was dry and I started on the outside line in sixth,” he went on, “but I managed to cut across to the inside and came out of the first corner in third, right behind the two leaders. I then followed second place past the leader, and took the lead myself into the following corner.

“I began to gradually edge away from the rest of the field, but then Lando Norris – who had been working his way quickly through the pack – closed in on me. He passed me with three laps to go, and although I tried to make a move back on him again before the end, it didn’t work out because he was defending all the time.”

A single tenth of a second behind when the flag fell and having led for two-thirds of the race, there was no shame in the slightest in being so narrowly pipped to the post by Norris, a leading light in both FKS and Super 1, winner of the prestigious ‘O’ Plate in 2010 and one of the hotly-tipped British title favourites in 2011.

Sticking right with his West Country compatriot all the way, Ryan conceded that it was ‘encouraging’ to be as quick as him and to be able to duel wheel-to-wheel the way he did. The pair had used to compete together at their ‘local’ circuit of Clay Pigeon in Dorset, before Lando moved up to national racing a year earlier and as such has now gained infinitely more experience of fighting against the country’s top competitors – but his Fusion Motorsport adversary is palpably catching up fast.

Confessing that he couldn’t have dreamt of this kind of form back at the beginning of the year, Ryan has made truly tremendous progress, and he acknowledges that whilst ‘in the middle of the season, I could hang onto Lando for a lap or two before he would pull away’, his erstwhile sparring-partner can’t pull away anymore...

“My heat results put me on pole position for the final,” he continued, “and that’s always a bit nerve-wracking, because you don’t know what’s going on behind you. I got quite a good start and tried to defend my lead into the first corner, but Dan Ticktum managed to sneak up the inside of me. He opened up quite a gap initially, but I closed back in on him and tried to push us both away from the pack.

“Lando came through again, though, hooked onto the back of me and then went past us both to take the lead. We all stuck together still, and going into the last lap, Lando and Dan were about half a kart-length ahead of me and starting to battle each other – that meant one or the other was always defending, whilst I could go wide into the corners to try to get a run on them on the exit.

“I got the switch-back on them through the first hairpin and came out of it in the lead, but they both got me back almost immediately so I knew I would just have to try again! Dan ran a bit wide going through the first part of the Esses, which put him onto the kerb for the second part – and I was up the inside straightaway!

“Lando was unfortunately gone by then, but I was able to successfully fend Dan off to the end of the race. I would have liked to have won, but I have to be happy with second, really – and it was a nice confidence boost, too. It was a good-quality field of drivers, and I think we did quite well up against them. Now the plan is to keep on building on this over the winter to go into next year even stronger.”