William Taylforth entered the fifth and sixth rounds of the 2011 Formula Kart Stars (FKS) Championship at Glan Y Gors needing a good result to lift his mood off the back of a torrid time of things in fellow national series Super 1 at the same track a week earlier. He left again celebrating his best weekend of the season to-date.
Having been troubled by persistent set-up woes in Super 1 around the undulating and demanding North Wales circuit – limiting him to unaccustomedly lowly eighth and 13th places in the two finals, despite his very best efforts – William confessed that he was not too sure what to expect when he returned there for the resumption of hostilities in FKS, a championship that bears the official support of both 2008 F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton and the sport’s influential ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone.
“I enjoy every track, but some tend to be kinder to you than others, and I’ve never really had all that much luck at Glan Y Gors,” mused the talented Lancastrian speed demon, explaining that he had struggled for consistency round there in the past.
“FKS is the British Championship and the one everyone wants to win, but prior to Glan Y Gors, I’d had a few bad rounds this year. We were a bit downhearted after Super 1, too, but I just had to try to keep my head up. I was certainly fired-up and determined to make amends – and the FKS weekend definitely raised our spirits.” Indeed, William would prove to be in fine form right from the outset, qualifying an extremely solid fifth on the opening day – in a 46-strong MSA British Cadet class field constituting the very crème de la crème of young British driving talent at that level – despite missing out on the tow, something that he acknowledges is ‘a very big thing’ at Glan Y Gors with its long back straight up the hill.
‘Moderately’ satisfied with that outcome in the circumstances, the Great Eccleston-based hotshot went on to take the chequered flag a close and competitive fourth in a ‘very fraught and tense’ first heat race – ‘in those moments, it’s really dog-eat-dog out there,’ he conceded, as nine karts flashed across the finish line all blanketed by just a quarter-of-a-second – whilst when the heavens opened in heat two, merely keeping it on the black stuff on slick tyres on a treacherously slippery track surface became something of a challenge all in itself.
“The race started off well,” William recounts. “I got up to sixth on the first lap, but then I think a driver behind misjudged his braking-point and ploughed into the back of me, spinning me round and leaving me right down at the back. Fortunately, the race was stopped and then re-started to allow us to switch to wet-weather tyres, and after that I just tried to regain as many places as I could. I was very aggressive in my overtaking, but then I got into another tangle and got spun round again. I recovered well in the end, I think.”
Producing an eye-catching performance indeed, the 13-year-old’s gritty and determined effort yielded 12th place from virtually plum last, and some excellent lap times along the way sent out a warning shot about his potential ahead of the all-important final, which he would begin 11th.
“I had to do a bit of grass-cutting at the start as it all got a bit messy in the midfield, which cost me about seven places,” he recalled, “but I battled hard after that to make my way back through again. I got up behind another quick driver, and we just worked together to push each other along and gain ground. It was a very tough race, and one that I think really highlighted who the best drivers are. I was very pleased with the result – fifth place was my first trophy in FKS, and I got to spray the soda up on the podium afterwards, which was a lot of fun!”
In an encounter that truly did separate the wheat from the chaff as it were, William ably demonstrated that he is very much one of FKS’ bona fide front-runners, with a second successive stirring recovery and a better fastest lap than the race-winner to-boot. Day two, however, would begin on a slightly less encouraging note, with traffic on each of his ‘flying’ laps during qualifying costing the Hodgson High School pupil dear and leaving him down in an entirely unrepresentative 16th place.
“I tried to look on the bright side,” he maturely reflected. “Starting towards the back at Glan Y Gors is not a complete disaster, because there’s nearly always a shunt on the opening lap where you can make up places.”
Improving to eighth position in heat one, in heat two, William rose to a magnificent second – a 14-place gain on his grid slot – before he got shunted around over the course of a particularly feisty last lap and wound up fourth, still barely three-quarters-of-a-second adrift of the top spot. And from there, he began the final 12th.
“I fell back a little at the start, but then I got my head down and found one of my team-mates and we pushed together,” he related. “I think we worked very well to fight our way through the pack. By the time we got to the closing stages of the race, there were six of us in the lead group and it was real dog-eat-dog again – whenever someone got to the front, almost immediately they would be shuffled back down the order!
“There was a collision ahead on the last lap which lifted me to fourth, but then one of the drivers was demoted for it which elevated me to third. I was very pleased with that – it crowned the day’s turnaround from bad to good.”
Setting fastest lap for good measure and charitably revealing afterwards that he would have given the place up again as he felt his rival had been unjustly penalised for a simple racing incident, William’s sportsmanlike behaviour is all-too-rare in the modern win-at-all-costs era – and all-the-more laudable for it.
Having moved up from 13th to 11th in the title standings – right on the fringes of the top ten and within striking-distance of sixth – the Fusion Motorsport star is a completely different driver to the nervous rookie of this time last year. Paying tribute to his team’s sterling hard work and support, he is on top of his game at the moment – and palpably eager to maintain that momentum.
“I just want to keep moving up the table,” he concluded. “Winning the championship now might be out-of-my-reach, but there’s a long way to go yet – we’re only halfway through the season – so there’s still plenty of time to make up ground and, who knows, I may just be in with a shout if we carry on the way we are…”
