After producing what was by some margin his finest performance of the year to-date to take a well-deserved podium finish at Oulton Park, Jack Hawksworth has warned his Formula Renault UK rivals that he is now ‘back on it’ and more fired-up than ever to claim his breakthrough victory.
Following a solid start to his maiden campaign of car racing with third place at Brands Hatch and a brace of fourths at Donington Park, Jack endured a torrid time of things in round three at Thruxton, with a litany of errors contributing to what he described as a ‘terrible’ showing. Happily, there was then a five-week break before Oulton Park – time to get his head together and get to the bottom of precisely what was causing his early-season malaise.
“Thruxton was just shocking,” the talented young Bradford speed demon candidly confessed. “We weren’t quick enough full-stop, and I think I could probably have counted about 20 mistakes that I made in each race. From a personal point-of-view, it was my worst performance that I can remember. I needed the time off to just sort myself out, to find out why I hadn’t been driving the way I had expected of myself – so in that respect, it was the ideal time for a break.
“Psychologically, I wasn’t 100 per cent. I hadn’t been sleeping properly ever since Brands Hatch. Going from karting, where you’re always either in the kart or working on the kart – where there’s always something going on – I think I struggled to adapt to the fact that in car racing there are big gaps of time, and maybe a full day to think about everything before you get back in the car again.“So much time is spent talking about it all, whereas I’ve always been more used to just going out there and getting on with it, and I’ve had to learn to adapt to this different approach. I probably actually tried too hard to adapt at first, but at Oulton Park, I reverted to my previous way of going about things and I felt a lot more comfortable, like I had been back in the Winter Series.”
The Formula Renault UK Winter Series – Jack’s car racing debut off the back of an ultra-successful national and international karting career – had seen the Cullingworth-based hotshot stun with a string of pole positions and two rostrums. Still, even after keeping himself race-sharp with a couple of karting outings – one of which he utterly dominated – he admitted to feeling ‘apprehensive’ arriving at Oulton Park.
“It was just good to be battling with people and going wheel-to-wheel,” he recalled of his karting appearances. “That was what it was all about for me. I wasn’t even that bothered about the end result, to be honest; I was just happy to be fighting again and driving well.
“Oulton Park is a great track, one of the few in the country that still has real character; it’s not flat, it’s not an airfield – it’s a real racing circuit. It has adverse and positive camber, uphill and downhill sections – and it’s more of a challenge because of that. It’s a real drivers’ circuit. Every circuit requires you to do a good job, but I think Oulton Park commands just that little bit more respect due to the proximity of the barriers – it isn’t as forgiving as a lot of other circuits are.
“I was anxious to make sure my performance was back at the level I thought it should be, but as soon as I hit the track on Saturday morning, I knew I was back and ready to rock – and I was really pumped-up for the first qualifying session! I was on pole position with just a minute-and-a-half to go and I was another one-and-a-half tenths up again in the first sector of my next lap, but then the red flags came out.
“At that point I thought I had got pole, and I hadn’t had that much adrenaline going through me for some time, which was such a good feeling. The session got underway again, though, and I pushed a bit too hard in the first corner and messed up my last lap, so after that it was a case of waiting to see if anyone else could beat me, and Alex Lynn just pipped me at the end.
“It was still nice to be on the front row and reaffirmed what I had thought going into the weekend – that I was driving a lot better than in the first three meetings – but I was disappointed because I knew pole position was going to be so, so important on Sunday. I felt like I deserved it, too, after pushing myself so hard over the previous month, so it was a bit of an anti-climax.”
If that session was an anti-climax, then the second was quite simply an outright ‘flop’, as throttle issues meant Jack didn’t get to take to the track at all. It was, he reflected, ‘a disaster’.
“You can’t overtake easily in Formula Renault UK around Oulton Park, so it’s very difficult to come through the field,” he explained. “We could certainly have pushed Lynn all the way for pole again, and could maybe even have got it ourselves – we were the only ones capable of matching him all weekend, really. As it was, race two was a write-off from that moment on.” First, though, was race one – an encounter that underlined Jack’s conviction that he had the measure of Lynn as he harried the championship leader throughout, lapping a mere seven hundredths of a second adrift of his adversary and taking the chequered flag just 1.7 seconds in arrears...and comfortably clear of the chasing pack.
“I got good drive up to the first corner and got right behind Lynn,” recounted the 20-year-old car racing rookie. “He braked quite early, and I nearly ran into the back of him – in hindsight, I maybe should have thrown it up the inside. I was all over him around the opening lap, but there was nowhere I could go; Tio Ellinas was right on my rear bumper too, so I couldn’t really move out anywhere to try to get the cutback on Lynn, as Ellinas would have dived up the inside of me.
“I pushed as hard as I could for the first four or five laps to try and force Lynn into a mistake, but I never got close enough to be able to attempt a lunge – and sitting in his dirty air damaged my tyres, which meant he was able to pull out a little bit of a gap in the middle part of the race.
“When my tyres came back, I could settle into a rhythm for the last few laps; I was actually aiming to set fastest lap on the final lap and I was on-course for it through the first two sectors, but I saw a few spots of rain on my visor heading up towards Druids, so I backed off. Druids is notorious if there’s a bit of grease down there, and I didn’t want to risk the safe second place that I had – if I had dropped it then, it wouldn’t have been clever...”
Wisely deeming that discretion was indeed the better part of valour, Jack acknowledged that he was content to ascend the second step of the rostrum, reasoning that ‘pace-wise, it was the most competitive I’ve been this year by a long way’. Sadly, an eye-catchingly feisty effort in race two did not yield the same kind of reward.
“I was praying for rain to be able to come through the field and maybe even get another podium,” confessed the Mark Burdett Motorsport star, “but unfortunately, it was bone dry. I made some really nice moves to gain a few positions in the first two or three laps and move up to tenth, and then there was about a 2.5-second gap to the two drivers battling over eighth place. As soon as I had a bit of clear air, I stormed up behind them – I set what was the fastest lap of the race at that point, and it took me just two laps to close them down.
“The problem was that once I got right up behind them, I was in their dirty air. I was all over the back of them and “The problem was that once I got right up behind them, I was in their dirty air. I was all over the back of them and so much quicker, but every lap they just kept defending everywhere. I was desperately trying to find an opening, but there was no way through.
“Eventually, coming out of the hairpin, I got a brilliant run going down towards Knickerbrook Chicane; the driver ahead stuck to the inside line, so I just thought, ‘I’m going right the way around the outside here’. I nearly made the move stick, but I just couldn’t quite slow the car down enough to make the corner and I ended up spinning round.
“If I had the race again, though, I would go in with exactly the same attitude. I’m not here to finish tenth, and there’s no point in just sitting behind someone for the entire race – I knew how quick I was, and I was determined to at least make a go of it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, but the biggest lesson from it all is that races in this championship are won on Saturdays, not Sundays.”
The third-best lap time despite completing barely half the race clearly pointed to what might have been, but whilst Jack’s failure to finish means he has slipped to fifth place in the title standings heading next to Croft on ‘home’ turf in Yorkshire, he is adamant that he is ready and able to fight back.
“From my own performance point-of-view, I was ecstatic,” he concluded. “I couldn’t have been any happier – the improvement from the first three rounds was huge. I felt revved up for it, and I really felt like I was enjoying racing again. I was a little disappointed with the final results, but I was very happy with the way I drove.
“If we hadn’t got a bit unlucky in Q1, we could have won the first race; I know it’s easy to say that now of course, but I genuinely believe we had the pace to take the fight to Lynn in both qualifying sessions. If we could have got pole both times, we could have won both races.
“We definitely didn’t get what we deserved from the weekend points-wise, but the other half of me is over-the-moon. I was really sharp and felt like we had the pace to win all weekend, and it was the first time I’ve had that feeling all year – this was the first meeting of the season where I feel I performed to my potential. I’m a different driver now to what everybody had seen beforehand this year. I’ve finally found my feet and I’m back on it again – and now I just want to carry that momentum forward.”
