on impressive car racing debut

On the face of it, Callum Bowyer’s car racing debut in the 2011 Formula Renault BARC Championship curtain-raiser at Donington Park was one of disappointment, but delve beneath the surface and there are more than enough indications that the talented young Peterborough hotshot will take a quantum leap forward in round two at Brands Hatch.

Callum headed to Donington with just eight days’ testing underneath his belt in his single-seater – one capable of accelerating to 100mph in a jaw-dropping five seconds – and preparing to pitch himself against a highly-competitive field of 21 rivals, the majority of whom benefitting from far more experience than him. Still, pre-season testing had gone well and had culminated in a hugely encouraging seventh place in the final outing at Silverstone – leaving the Antel Motorsport star ‘quietly confident’ about his chances.

“I was really looking forward to the first round,” he acknowledged. “I was more excited than nervous, to be honest. I was quietly confident, and hopeful of getting some good results. I already feel like I’ve been at Antel for years; I’m really settled there, and I get on with them all really well – they’re a great bunch of guys.

“Our preparation had been really good; I felt strong in myself, and had trained hard for a long time leading up to the race weekend. I felt we had done the right groundwork in testing, and the pace we had shown had been good considering the limited amount of time we’d had in the car – so I was just looking to build on all that through the weekend.”

Unfortunately, a lack of Friday practice counted against the championship’s rookies, and placed Callum on the back foot right from the word ‘go’. That meant that rather than chasing fast lap times straightaway in qualifying, the Gunthorpe-based speed demon found himself needing to mentally re-familiarise himself with the track, bed in a set of wet tyres in case of rain on race day and set his car up to suit the circuit characteristics – all things that would normally be carried out in free practice when nothing is at stake.

As it was, he had to get to grips with the whole gamut during a qualifying session just 20 minutes long and in which, he quipped, ‘it’s hard enough as it is just setting a quick lap time!’ Lining up a lowly 18th for race one and 17th for race two was a clear legacy of that, but confessing to already rating Donington as one of his favourite circuits, the 16-year-old remained laudably upbeat ahead of race day.

“I was disappointed initially because of the pace we had shown during testing, but it was my first race weekend in cars and it is all new to me, at the end of the day,” he maturely reflected. “I just had to focus on trying to get through the traffic to come away with some half-decent results. The changes we made during qualifying really seemed to help in the races, and our pace was much better – a lot closer to the front.

“Race one was my first-ever start in cars, surrounded by all the other drivers on the grid, so there was a bit of pressure from that – but I made a really good getaway and passed two other cars heading up towards the first corner. Everyone stayed really bunched together for quite a while, and by lap three, I was up to tenth.

“Then I went up the inside of the driver in ninth into the final corner, but I don’t think he saw me in his mirrors and he turned in, leaving me with nowhere to go and taking my front wing off. I pitted for a new nosecone and rejoined the race, but by then we were two laps down.

“In race two, I got a really good start again, passed some cars in front and worked my way up to 13th, but at that point I had no idea that I had been clipped from behind and left with a puncture in my right-rear tyre. Going down towards the Old Hairpin, the car is all loaded on that tyre and it spun me round and into the gravel. It was really unexpected, and from there, I was just a passenger...”

A brace of DNFs was palpably not what Callum had been either anticipating or hoping for from the weekend, but despite what was a baptism of fire and then some, there were sufficient flashes of genuine potential to suggest that the remainder of the campaign will be a very different story. His overtaking prowess, in particular, was tremendously impressive – and although he is still irrefutably on a steep learning curve, with scheduled practice for round two at Brands Hatch, next time, he vows, he will be ready.

“It obviously wasn’t what we had been aiming for, but everyone has bad weekends,” mused the former British Karting Champion in conclusion. “If we’d had Friday practice, we would have had more pace in qualifying and been further up the grid and away from the damage zone that we got tangled up in, and maybe it would have been a different outcome to the races.

“On the positive side, the pace was definitely there on race day, even if the timesheets don’t necessarily show it because we did so few laps. We know we can go through the traffic, too – I overtook 12 cars in the five racing laps that I had – and we just need to take those positives on to the second round at Brands Hatch.

“It’s easy to look on the downside after a weekend when you don’t really get any results, but it was my first-ever car racing meeting, and the improvement we made from Saturday to Sunday was really promising. The first one was always going to be the hardest, but we just need a bit of luck now – and then I’m sure the results will come.”