He had espoused the importance of consistency heading into the fifth and sixth rounds of the 2011 Formula Kart Stars (FKS) Championship at Glan Y Gors, and Ryan Anderton ably practised what he preached around the undulating and demanding North Wales circuit to secure a brace of runner-up finishes – and with them, assume control in the title standings.
Officially endorsed by both 2008 F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton and the sport’s influential ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone, FKS is the same series from which the McLaren-Mercedes star himself first sprang to prominence a little over a decade ago – and as such, its MSA British Cadet class crown is one of the most coveted in karting.
Following a disappointing end to his previous outing, also at Glan Y Gors, in fellow national championship Super 1 – finding himself harpooned by an out-of-control rival on the very last lap as he had been on-track for a well-deserved victory – Ryan returned a week later with his sights firmly set on snatching the FKS championship lead.
“After the pace we’d had in Super 1, we were feeling confident,” revealed the highly-rated Somerset speed demon. “The competition is a tiny bit tougher in FKS – there are more good drivers there – so it’s never going to be easy from that point-of-view, but we were hopeful of doing well.”
An excellent second place in qualifying on the opening day set the tone for the weekend as – a scant tenth of a second shy of the benchmark up against some 45 adversaries comprising the very crème de la crème of young British driving talent at that level – Ryan got it absolutely ‘nailed’ and proved he had the pace to challenge right at the front.
In a weather-affected first heat, the Glastonbury-based hotshot mastered the constantly changing conditions with admirable ease, leading for two-thirds of the race before getting embroiled in a fierce three-way tussle for supremacy and winding up a close second, a gnat’s whisker adrift of the winner. He subsequently claimed a superb triumph in heat two, prevailing in a tight five-way scrap to earn himself P2 on the grid for the all-important final, albeit on the unenviable outside line.
“It’s ridiculous starting on the outside at Glan Y Gors, because they can all just gang up and push past you in a train of karts on the inside,” Ryan rued. “Luckily, I managed to tuck in pretty quickly and didn’t lose too many positions, and after the leader’s chain came off and I caught and passed someone else, three of us made a break together at the front.
“I led for a while, but then with two laps to go I let Daniel Ticktum past, because I had learned that leading towards the end of a race in Cadets is rarely the best place to be. As we went down through the Devil’s Elbow section on the last lap, I went for the switchback on Dan and got up the inside on the exit, but then I overshot the next turn a little bit which sent me wide and he managed to get me back.
“We were side-by-side for most of the lap, to be fair, and I went to the inside again into the next corner and managed to hold him out this time, but our battling had let Shanaka Clay latch right onto the back of us, and he got the cutback on us both to win. Any one of the three of us could have won that race!”
Still very pleased with the runner-up spoils, and rightly so, qualifying on day two yielded another second position – a result that Ryan repeated in an energetic opening heat race and that the 11-year-old St. Dunstan’s Community School pupil maturely reasoned was ‘good enough’. Heat two would transpire to be just as lively.
“Being on the outside again, a massive train filed past me at the start,” he recounted. “I saw people who had begun back on the sixth or seventh row of the grid come by, and I couldn’t do anything about it. As soon as I saw a gap, though, I went for it and tucked in, and then I found my team-mate Will Taylforth and we worked together to come through the field.
“I was down in ninth place and the top three had broken away, but we kept on pushing each other nicely along and we eventually caught the leaders and immediately got amongst them. Three of us then pulled slightly clear on the last lap, and when the other two started battling behind, that pretty much sealed the win for me – and pole for the final.
“We fell back initially in the final due to power issues; I was struggling to get my kart off the corners – we would catch the others so much on the entry, but then as soon as I put my foot down again on the exit, they would just pull away. One driver even went past me along the straight!
“I caught the front pack again towards the end, though, and three of them had a little coming-together, which enabled me to regain second place. On the last lap, I thought about trying to get the cutback on the leader, but I wasn’t convinced it would come off and he stuck right to the apexes, which meant there was no way past without resorting to a risky manoeuvre.”
So close when the chequered flag fell, Ryan mused with characteristic understatement that the runner-up spot was ‘okay’, but the balance of the weekend was far more than merely ‘okay’ as in outscoring all of his competitors at Glan Y Gors with a dominant tally of 384 points out of a possible 400 – adding to the 390 he had totalled the previous time at Three Sisters near Wigan, scene of his breakthrough British victory – he has moved to the head of the standings.
Having not finished lower than third in any heat race or final in the past four FKS outings – with a staggering six national podium finishes in the space of just a month – the Fusion Motorsport ace is truly in a rich vein of form at the moment and aiming to keep that run going. What’s more, he knows that maintaining that kind of flawless consistency over the second half of the campaign will be key – since upon such solid foundations are championships won.
“It’s a bit like with a mountain,” Ryan pondered in conclusion. “You climb to the summit, plant your flag to mark your territory and then try to stay up there for as long as you can. That’s what I intend to do – and hopefully I’ll still be on top of the mountain at the end of the season.”
