From illness to ill-fortune, James Singleton took everything that was thrown at him in the second round of the 2011 Formula Kart Stars (FKS) Championship at Three Sisters near Wigan and brilliantly rose above it all – sealing a superb double victory and firmly laying down the gauntlet to his British title rivals.
Having been on the front-running pace all year but without the results to show for it for one reason or another, Lady Luck again seemed to have turned her back upon James when he was struck down with chicken pox the week before the meeting – casting his very participation into serious doubt.
“I felt really rough,” confessed the talented young North Wales karting star. “On the Wednesday, I finally started to feel a little bit better, but it was only the Thursday – the day before official practice – when we knew we were definitely going to be racing.
“I hadn’t been out of the house all week, which meant I hadn’t been able to do any exercise, so the main concern going into the weekend was my fitness. Three Sisters is a really bumpy, physically demanding track and I was worried that I might find it hard to hold onto the kart, especially in finals that were 15 minutes long.
“It’s also one of my local circuits, though, and I’ve done a lot of testing round there so I’ve got plenty of experience of it. I really enjoy it, too, and I’d won a club meeting there from seventh on the grid a couple of weeks beforehand, so overall I was feeling quite confident – and as soon as we put the kart down on the track on Friday morning, we knew we were going to be fast enough.”
Up against 24 fiercely-competitive adversaries in the Junior Max class of FKS – a series that boasts the prestigious official backing of both 2008 F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton and the sport’s influential ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone – James was indeed on it right from the word ‘go’.
Unfortunately, clutch failure in Saturday’s qualifying session left his Coles Racing kart down-on-power around one of the most high-speed, power-dependent circuits in the country and a lowly 16th on the grid for his two heat races that day. An early blow to his prospects it might have been, but the Conwy-based speed demon would be unbowed – and impressively undeterred.
“I knew what to do at the starts, because I’d done it so many times at Three Sisters before,” he explained, evincing the benefit of ‘local knowledge’. “I went around the outside to about eighth position in both races, and after that I knew I had the kart underneath me to go forward. I just had to concentrate on getting my lines right, and I picked them off one-by-one.”
Scything his way through the field like the proverbial hot knife through butter, James proceeded to triumph in his opening heat and finish runner-up in the second – a tremendous recovery from his qualifying woes, some way above his rather more modest ‘top five’ expectations and securing him pole position for the all-important final. Buoyed by that and with the temperature, wind direction and track conditions changing increasingly in his favour, he would go on to breeze it.
“I got a bit of a break at the start, and behind me, the next couple of drivers began battling,” recalled the Penmaenmawr hotshot. “That enabled me to pull away, but I still had to stay consistent, keep my head down and not look behind – and it was fantastic to win! We were over-the-moon with that!”
Taking the chequered flag comfortably clear of his closest pursuer, he might have made it look easy, but James admitted that the legacy of his lack of pre-weekend training showed, revealing that ‘as the laps went on, I felt increasingly drained and I could really feel my arms beginning to give in going round some of the faster corners’. Dehydrated into the bargain, he quipped that ‘I spent most of the evening in bed...not the best way to celebrate my first national win of the season’ – but he would come out fighting again on day two.
Fortified by painkillers, in Sunday’s qualifying session, the Ysgol Aberconwy pupil saw off every single one of his competitors to secure pole position, but a commanding victory in the first heat would be taken away from him when a small crack in his exhaust saw his kart unexpectedly fail scrutineering. Notwithstanding a peerless triumph in heat two as he left the chasing pack trailing more than four seconds in his wake, James would have to begin the final from 25th place. Or, to put it another way, plum last.
“I was anticipating quite a battle from there!” he acknowledged. “I knew I had to keep my head throughout the race, and the aim was to maybe finish inside the top seven. I made a big gain into the first corner; I decided to go round the outside again, and thanks to a bit of bumping on the inside, I came out of it 13th. I gained a few more places when some drivers came off ahead of me in the second corner which put me into the top ten, and after that, I just slowly picked them off one-by-one.
“As the leaders started battling towards the end of the race, I got onto the back of them and managed to take the lead. I was still under a bit of pressure after that because I knew Wigan was the driver behind’s ‘home’ track, too, so he knew all the tricks round there as well and he’s a good racer – but I held on to win. We were ecstatic to come from last all the way through to first – we couldn’t believe we had actually done it! It was just a perfect weekend.”
It was a truly awesome performance and a thoroughly well-deserved result, as the 15-year-old banished the bad luck that has seemingly been following him around this year with a magnificent back-to-front charge to seal a popular double success. More than making up for a week spent confined to his bed, but for the exclusion, he would have taken near-enough maximum points away from Three Sisters, and as it is, he has closed to within touching distance of the championship lead.
Better still, FKS will head next to Glan Y Gors in North Wales – James’ ‘home’ circuit, and one he knows like the back of his hand. Indisputably in the groove now, he is palpably targeting more of the same.
James is seeking sponsors to help support him in 2011; if you are interested in backing North Wales’ brightest young F1 hope, please contact his father Mark on 07795 297350 or at: gwyneddforklifts@ukf.net
