and hauls himself into the reckoning
Luke Whitworth produced a determined performance to grab his first national podium finish of the 2011 campaign in the second outing of the Lewis Hamilton and Bernie Ecclestone-backed Formula Kart Stars (FKS) Championship at Three Sisters near Wigan – and his confidence is such that he hopes it will be the first of many.
Buoyed by a brilliant breakthrough victory at PF International and a spirited showing to snatch the runner-up spoils against a whole clutch of local specialists at Buckmore Park in the weeks leading up to the event, Luke had even more reason than usual to look forward to the resumption of FKS hostilities given that he had been unable to compete at Three Sisters in 2010 – his maiden season of karting competition – due to a broken arm.
What’s more, he had displayed promising form indeed around the high-speed circuit in club meetings, and was fired-up in the extreme after running in a superb second place in the final of FKS’ Rowrah curtain-raiser the previous month only to be cruelly denied the result he palpably deserved.
“After featuring inside the top three for much of the weekend there, we knew we could do it again,” asserted the talented young Rotherham speed demon. “That gave us a real confidence boost. The lack of results at Rowrah didn’t get me down too much, because we had proved we had the pace, so we just had to take that on to Wigan and try to do as well as we could.
“Three Sisters isn’t the most exciting track to drive, but it usually makes for good racing because it’s really hard for anyone to get away. The Junior Max grid in FKS this year is stronger than we had expected it to be, too, and really quite a tough field – there are some top Super 1 drivers there, so it’s good to be able to compare myself against them.”
Amongst such esteemed company, Luke is giving an excellent account of himself, although he was keeping his expectations in-check to a degree as he had not been able to conduct much prior testing at Wigan, aiming simply to score as many points as possible to make up for missing out in Cumbria. Saturday qualifying, however, would yield a disappointing 13th position on the 25-strong Junior Max grid.
“I started trying too hard and let myself down,” he confessed. “I didn’t manage to get into the tow, and with Three Sisters having such a long main straight, that’s really important – if you don’t get a good tow round there, you won’t set a good lap time. I didn’t get too downcast about it, though, because the kart felt good and I knew we could still recover from there.”
In a supremely tightly-packed field, Luke was indeed a mere 17 hundredths of a second shy of the outright pace, so all was not lost by a long straw, and seventh and eighth places in his two heat races represented solid progress, despite suffering from ‘stressful’ engine woes that left the Wickersley-based hotshot short on mid-range power down the straights and vulnerable to attack. Of all the circuits around which to have engine troubles, Three Sisters is not the one you would choose – and the issue persisted in the final, which he would begin seventh.
“With the problems we had, I wasn’t feeling as confident as I could have been, especially in terms of passing people,” the 16-year-old conceded. “I wasn’t putting the kart where I wanted it to go, and I lost some ground at the start. The front group got away and I was trying to push to close the gap. Because the pack was so tight, though, there was a lot of overtaking and defending going on and we consequently lost touch with the leaders.”
In what developed into something of a yo-yo race, eighth place at the chequered flag might not have been what Luke had been hoping for, but it still represented a decent haul of points and a far better result than on the opening day at Rowrah.
Better yet, having lacked grip for much of Saturday, some overnight changes to his kart really paid dividends, leaving the Wickersley School and Sports College pupil more confident in the equipment underneath him and enabling him to secure a superb third place in qualifying on the second day, a scant five hundredths adrift of the benchmark and revealing that ‘I was able to get the power down earlier and really get the most out of the engine’.
The same position in his opening heat race was similarly encouraging, whilst a ‘dogfight’ of a second encounter resulted in sixth place at the flag, earning Luke fourth on the grid for the all-important final – and very much in the ballpark. In a tremendous performance, he would go on to run inside the top four throughout – only once, indeed, falling outside of the leading trio – and a gritty late push rewarded him with a thoroughly well-deserved rostrum.
“I got a good start and went around the outside of the first corner to take second place,” he recalled, “and then I tried to push together with the leader to establish a gap over the field, but as soon as we started to race a bit and overtake each other, they caught us right up.
“I dropped down to fourth when James Singleton came past me, but I was still absolutely determined to finish on the podium, so I tried to stay relaxed and knew I just had to keep my head straight and stay consistent. I knew the driver ahead of me in third had a really good engine, so I tried to get into his tow and keep putting him under pressure until he started making a few mistakes and I was able to get past.
“Then the two leaders began battling, which allowed me to gain on them and get a little bit of a tow. I was really pushing, but there wasn’t quite enough time left to do anything about it. Still, I was really happy to finish third.”
With good reason, and the Yorkshire ace’s first national podium of 2011 – and only the second of his fledgling career – served to underline just how far he has come over the past 12 months. Another genuine step forward and a welcome injection of confidence into the bargain, with his racecraft going from strength-to-strength and having vaulted from ninth in the title standings pre-weekend to seventh now – and an impressive fourth on dropped scores – as FKS heads next to one of Luke’s favourite tracks in the shape of Glan Y Gors in North Wales, the goal is to keep those podiums coming...
