Hand belies step-up in class with double podium finish at Senior level

In 2010, he established himself as the best in Britain at Junior level by lifting the coveted laurels in the Lewis Hamilton and Bernie Ecclestone-backed Formula Kart Stars Championship; barely a handful of months on and having stepped things up another gear, highly-rated young Nuneaton karting star Ash Hand is now taking the fight to the country’s elite at Senior level, too, with an inspired double podium finish only second time out.

Ash has graduated to the more powerful and even more hotly-contested Senior Rotax class with Tim Parrott Motorsport in 2011, and he immediately demonstrated his prowess and potential with a front-running performance in the national Super 1 Series curtain-raiser at Whilton Mill in Northants, duelling for glory with the leaders only to be denied the kind of result he so palpably deserved by a cracked piston.

From there, the Super 1 circus moved on to the high-speed Shenington circuit in Oxfordshire, with Ash targeting a solid haul of points to get his season properly underway – and qualifying fourth and third respectively for his two heat races in the 44-strong field was indisputably a highly encouraging start.

“The first heat was quite a tough battle between five of us up at the front, and I came through it to finish second,” recounted the Maple Park hotshot. “In heat two, I ran second for virtually the whole race right behind Ed Brand, the championship leader.

“I kept dropping back a little to see how quickly I could catch him and how much pace I had – I would fall back a couple of kart-lengths, and within just half-a-lap, I was right on his bumper again. It was really easy to close the gap back up and I could have beaten him, but I didn’t want to take the risk of trying to overtake when the heats are all about working towards a good grid position for the finals – and besides, after that, we knew we had the speed to win.”

Tracking his quarry all the way to the finish line and taking the chequered flag a scant seven hundredths of a second in arrears, it was indeed a tremendously slender margin – and with no points awarded in the heats, Ash’s approach revealed a remarkably mature and sensible head on a driver of only 16 years of age, and left him with his tail up ahead of the all-important finals.

Each would develop into a three-horse race with fellow CRG ace Andy King and Brand as the trio proved to be in a league of their own, with the first final getting a little ‘messy’ in the early laps and the North Warwickshire College Student finding himself embroiled in a fierce battle for the runner-up laurels with Brand, allowing King to edge away to victory. The scrap over second place was one that Ash would win, but whilst he was ‘really pleased’ with his maiden rostrum finish at Senior level, still he confessed to a touch of disappointment at what might have been.

“The track had changed between the heats and the finals, and we just didn’t have the pace anymore,” he rued. “The kart was too ‘pointy’ at the front, which meant the back end kept sliding round. It was bogging down and wouldn’t pull away from the corners properly – so we changed a few things slightly for the second final, but that only made it worse...

“In that race, I was driving around quite comfortably in second place, and then I pulled off a really good move to overtake King; that put him out wide, after which he and Brand began to scuffle a little bit. That gave us a gap, but unfortunately we weren’t quick enough to be able to maintain it. We just didn’t have the pace to win, and after they both came past me again, it was all I could do to hang onto the back of Andy.”

With nobody else ever really coming close to threatening the dominant trio – who monopolised the rostrum in both finals – Ash was left to reflect upon an extremely solid weekend during which his CRG chassis had been ‘excellent’ and the racing up at the sharp end ‘really hard but clean’.

“It was good to come away with a couple of podiums, and all the points we gained will have massively helped my championship position, too,” mused the Voi Jeans brand ambassador in conclusion. “We were a little bit disappointed, to be honest, because we had that much pace during the heats that we knew we should have won – it all came down to getting the set-up just slightly wrong for the finals.

“Senior Rotax is definitely harder than Juniors, and there are some excellent drivers who are consistently at the front – but we’re right up there with them. It’s a good challenge for me – and I’m enjoying it. It’s a tough championship, but if we just put everything together and get it all right, Brand is definitely beatable. I’m feeling very confident now for the next round at Rowrah; I won there in Super 1 last year in Junior Max, and it’s a circuit that’s not so much about the equipment, but about the way you drive it.”