‏It could have been a total washout for Russ Danzey in the third outing of the 2011 Formula Renault BARC Championship at Oulton Park, but evincing the grit and determination that has already seen him establish himself as one of Britain’s very brightest young motorsport prospects, the talented Sheffield speed demon turned things around in spectacular style.

In his first full campaign of car racing competition following a hugely successful career in karting, Russ travelled to Oulton with his spirits buoyed by his impressive form at Brands Hatch a fortnight earlier, where he had clinched a second top ten finish from just four starts this season. Arriving in Cheshire, he was quietly optimistic about his prospects.

“I’m still finding my feet a bit inside the team and in the car, but we’d had a couple of good races and been close to the pace at Brands Hatch, so I was just really looking forward to the weekend,” he affirmed. “We’d done one test day at Oulton over the winter, but that was back in the very early stages for me in Formula Renault, and I was still getting used to the car so my lap times weren’t particularly representative.

“It’s a brilliant track, though – a really demanding, undulating drivers’ circuit. You never stop improving round there, either – you’re always testing yourself at Oulton and finding more time and better lines – and you don’t really get a break around the lap.”

With experience paying dividends, Russ was on the back foot somewhat right from the outset, but despite a frustrating start to practice with changeable weather conditions and a succession of red flags that limited his preparation time, the highly-rated Dore-based hotshot swiftly got down to business, consistently improving his lap times and increasingly homing in on the benchmark as he got back to grips again with Oulton’s challenging layout. And then came the accident.

“I was heading down to the chicane, when towards the bottom of the hill I made a small mistake,” he candidly confessed. “I was just trying to push a little bit too hard, and I dropped a wheel on the exit of one of the kerbs, which sent me into a spin. I thought I could rescue it to begin with, but I touched the grass on the inside and from there I was just a passenger really, just staring at the tyre wall ahead until I hit it.”

A hefty impact, the sole real stroke of luck in the whole incident was that it occurred towards the end of the day, meaning Russ lost only one practice session. Praising his MGR Motorsport team for burning the midnight oil to repair the car in time for the next morning, the MSA Academy member would unfortunately endure a ‘disappointing’ qualifying session as he struggled to find a clear lap amongst all the traffic, with a late red flag compounding his troubles.

The data suggested that he could have been a fair bit higher up the order had only he been able to link all of his fastest sectors together, but as it was, he wound up just 17th on the 23-strong grid for each of the two races, with the tightness of lap times – less than half-a-second separated him from ninth place – meaning that ‘it was all a case of damage limitation from there, really...it’s quite hard to overtake in Formula Renault, so even though there are several potential passing places at Oulton, it was always going to be a fight to come through the pack’.

Race one was red-flagged early on to deal with a multi-car accident, and ahead of the re-start, the heavens opened, heightening the tension. With the rain ceasing again almost as soon as it had begun, whilst some parts of the track quickly dried out, others remained soaking wet, what Russ described as ‘a bit of a Spa moment’ in allusion to the legendary Belgian Grand Prix circuit at which the weather is invariably capricious in the extreme.

Oh yes, and to make it even more of a challenge, all of the drivers were on slick tyres and it was the first time the Birkdale School AS-level student had ever competed in the wet in cars. In the circumstances, he drove superbly.

“Some people went straight off and barrelled into the tyres at the second corner,” he recounted. “They were flying off left, right and centre! A large part of it was simply about trying to stay on the track; I almost lost it a few times myself – I think everybody did, to be honest. It was really wet in some of the corners, which made it tricky just to keep it on the black stuff. I quite enjoyed it as the race went on, though; it was good fun, and we were really pleased to come away with a top ten finish.”

A brilliant ninth at the close, Russ was hoping for more adverse conditions in race two to mix things up a bit again and help him to climb his way up the leader board, but even in what was an entirely dry encounter, he more than ably demonstrated his potential.

Another early red flag was a saving grace for the 16-year-old, who initially found himself stuck down in 18th place and losing time behind a very experienced adversary almost twice his age who ‘made his car three times as wide as normal!’ Making an excellent re-start, Russ aggressively gained several places on the inside of turn one, but lost out again when he found himself on the outside line and baulked going into the second corner, consequently slipping down to the very foot of the top 20.

“Luckily, the pack all concertina-d up at the hairpin,” he relates. “I went up the inside of the driver directly ahead, and because everybody was going so slow due to being so close to each other, I managed to get past the driver who had been holding me up so much earlier, too, which was crucial.

“I passed a few more as the race went on and finished 11th; I just ran out of time at the end to make up any more places, but still, after dropping to 20th on the first lap, I was really pleased to have come back through as far as that. To come away with what we did from how the weekend had started, I thought was absolutely fantastic.”

A magnificent recovery following his practice woes, the results saw Russ tally the seventh-highest points total of any competitor over the course of the meeting and outscore every single one of the drivers around him in the championship table to vault from 15th up to 12th, not far shy of the top ten.

A far more positive end to the weekend than the inauspicious manner in which it had begun, his laudable consistency – with five finishes now from just six starts – is every bit as impressive as his racecraft and raw pace. And for Russ Danzey, the best, assuredly, is very much still to come.

Russ is seeking sponsorship for the remainder of 2011; if you are interested in backing South Yorkshire’s brightest budding F1 hope, please contact his father Rob on 07779 995555 or at: robert.danzey@mac.com