Ryan Anderton is revved up and eager to show his rivals just what he is made of when the flag drops to signal the start of the 2011 Super 1 Series, following a string of encouraging results in the build-up that have left the highly-rated young Somerset speed demon fighting fit and ready to chase his goals.
The forthcoming national karting campaign will be only Ryan’s second full season in the sport, but the progress that he has made to-date is mighty impressive – and most recently, buoyed by an extremely positive week of testing under the Spanish sun, the Glastonbury-based hotshot headed north to Rowrah in Cumbria to pit himself against 34 Comer Cadet class adversaries.
A trio of excellent heat races yielded a brace of second places and a fourth – twice from mid-grid starting slots, and setting the fastest lap in one of them by a comparative country mile – leaving Ryan to begin the all-important final from third.
“The Fusion Motorsport team that I race with were down the road from the rest of the field,” the 11-year-old recounted, “and myself and my two team-mates were all within a hundredth of a second of each other. That made it a good battle and a really exciting race, but unfortunately we got the carburettor settings a bit wrong for the conditions, which left me in third for most of the final.
“It had got colder and the wind had picked up since the heats, and because we had mistakenly gone leaner rather than richer with the carb, the engine wasn’t warming up enough and there wasn’t enough fuel flowing through it, causing the kart to bog down. I would edge up on the other two going through the corners, but as soon as we came to a straight they could just pull away from me again, which was quite frustrating.
“With two laps to go I managed to richen the carb up and started catching them, though. I was still a little way behind going onto the last lap, but I went to the outside into the last corner and managed to snatch second place on the exit, and I very nearly got the leader across the line, too...”
In the circumstances, P2 was a commendable achievement, and in a veritable photo-finish if ever there was one, the St. Dunstan’s Community School pupil was a scant eight hundredths of a second shy of victory when the chequered flag fell, setting the equal-fastest lap time – better than that of the winner – for good measure.
That might have been a handy warm-up for the opening round of the Lewis Hamilton and Bernie Ecclestone-backed Formula Kart Stars Championship at the same track in April, but of more immediate concern for Ryan is the fast-approaching Super 1 curtain-raiser at PF International – and having finished a close runner-up in the Lincolnshire circuit’s 2011 Winter Series out of some 53 drivers, the West Country star is looking in fine form indeed to take on the very best in the country.
“Our performance in the PF Winter Series was definitely a boost, especially as there were quite a few big names there,” he mused in conclusion. “I would have preferred to have won it, obviously, but I was still happy enough with second.
“All of the club meetings and testing we’ve done at PF have been good preparation for the national competition, and I think we’ve got quite a lot of experience in terms of set-up and so forth around there now. I know the opposition will be really tough in Super 1 and that it will be a very close fight and extremely hard to win, but I’m feeling quietly confident"
