to kick-start season into gear
Jay Goodwin has revved his 2011 national karting campaign into life with a vengeance after producing a characteristically feisty and gritty performance in the third outing of the fiercely-contested Super 1 Series at Rowrah – with a double top ten finish representing comfortably his finest result of the season to-date.
Jay has enjoyed scant good fortune in Super 1 this year, with 23rd place the highlight from the opening two rounds as the talented young Sale-based speed demon has found himself ‘welcomed’ into the Junior Max class – to which he has graduated from the less powerful Mini Max level – by being battered around from pillar-to-post.
Nothing if not a tough little cookie, though, Jay headed to the undulating and demanding Cumbrian circuit of Rowrah targeting a brace of top ten finishes – and bullish about his prospects of achieving that objective. He may have been up against some ‘very tough’ opposition in the shape of 48 of the fastest and most uncompromising Junior Max competitors in Britain – of a higher calibre, he muses, even than his rivals on the European scene – but then, the Ashton-upon-Mersey hotshot is rarely intimidated.
“Rowrah is probably one of my favourite tracks in the country,” he enthuses. “I really like the layout, I think it suits my driving style well and it’s definitely a challenge, because it’s so technical. Thanks to Strawberry Racing, I had an excellent kart underneath me again, and I’m really benefitting from working with them this year.
“The team have been really welcoming to me, and thanks to Warwick Ringham, Dave Gregory, my mechanic Ed and all the lads, it has been so easy for me to settle in at Strawberry – they’re a really good bunch of guys who are great to work with. They’ve helped to bring me on as a driver so much.
“I need to thank my mentor Mark Litchfield, too. He’s a multiple British Karting Champion, and I can definitely feel the difference from working with him – it’s really making it easier for me out on the track. Mark is helping me with my racecraft a lot, and although there is still a bit to work on in that area, we’re going all-out to improve.” A promising sixth position in his 25-strong qualifying group at Rowrah – just over a third-of-a-second shy of the benchmark – paved the way for two encouragingly competitive heat races that clearly underlined Jay’s potential once more, but sadly did not yield the results they might have done as the North Cestrian Grammar School pupil candidly and maturely conceded to having made ‘a couple of mistakes’.
“In the first one, I didn’t really use my head,” he confessed. “I was fifth on the last lap, and throughout the race the driver ahead of me had been defending everywhere, so I went to go out wide into one of the corners to try to get the switchback on him on the exit but I let my guard down, and the driver behind was able to slip up the inside of me, which meant I finished sixth.
“In heat two, I was in eighth place, and the driver at the front of a pack of five karts ahead of me backed them right up heading down towards the bottom corner. That caught me out, and as I went into the corner, everything just went so fast and I ended up piling into them. I got given a five-place penalty for that, which was fair, to be honest, since I should have been more alert to what was happening.”
Having taken the chequered flag eighth – less than a second-and-a-half adrift of fourth position – Jay was demoted to 13th for his unintentional misdemeanour, when he could feasibly have wound up sixth. With more pace than the end results suggested and right in the ballpark, the 13-year-old went on to begin the opening final from 15th – right in the midfield danger zone.
“I got hit from behind at the start, which cost me a couple of places,” he recalled, “but after that, the race went really well. I picked several drivers off, and going onto the last lap, I was 11th. The driver ahead of me messed up a move, which gained me a couple more, and then someone else fired another driver off; that meant I finished eighth, but he subsequently got a penalty, which promoted me to seventh!
“It was such a good end to the race – just from backing off a bit and letting them take chunks out of each other instead of getting involved in it myself, I made up four positions!”
Justifiably pleased with his performance – particularly after lapping an excellent fifth-quickest along the way, faster than the race-winner – Jay’s progress through the field was eye-catching indeed as he made an impressive ten-place gain on his starting position.
The second final was a slightly more troubled affair, but in overcoming an early setback to settle into the top ten again, the J Davidson Scrap Metal Processors-backed ace ensured that it was mission accomplished for the meeting, and now Jay is bidding to keep his positive momentum going next time out at Larkhall in Scotland, as he builds up towards a truly concerted push in 2012.
“At the start, I got caught up in a bit of a crash, which left me with a bent chassis,” he revealed. “I was in no-man’s land for most of the race, but I knew that as long as I just kept it on the track, I would get another top ten finish – and that’s exactly what I did.
“I would definitely have settled for those results back at the start of the weekend. All we’re aiming to do is finish inside the top 15 overall in Super 1 this year to earn a seeded number for 2012. This year is just a learning year for us in Junior Max; next year will be when we really go for it!”
