As with any driver making the leap, it has taken Rory Cuff a little while to find his feet at KF3 level in 2011, but a brilliantly opportunistic podium finish in the prestigious annual Kartmasters meeting at PF International has sent out a stern warning to his bigger and older rivals that they can’t ‘bully him around’ anymore.
Having wound up respectively 25th, 11th and fifth in the MSA British Cadet Championship over the past three seasons, Rory has graduated to the more powerful, more physical and fiercely-competitive KF3 class this year, but his commitment to his education – he is set to start at Harrow in September – has meant less track time than the majority of his fellow competitors, leaving him on the back foot right from the word ‘go’.
One of the youngest in the class to-boot – giving away as much as three years to some of the opposition – and going up against the likes of the recently-crowned European Champion, the Under 18 World Championship pace-setter and the reigning Formula Kart Stars Champion, 2011 may be a steep learning curve for the highly-rated Amersham-based hotshot...but he is palpably learning fast.
“I found it very tough to begin with,” he confessed. “Coming straight from Cadets is a big jump, and because I’m very focussed on my schoolwork, too, I don’t get much time to test. Some of the other guys were off racing in Europe straightaway and so got plenty of seat time, whereas I was a bit behind.
“The extra power wasn’t actually a major thing to get used to, and the racing doesn’t feel that much faster either, to be fair, but whereas in Cadets, you’re always pushing each other along to try to get away from the chasing pack, KF3 is completely different, so I had to get that mentality out of my head.
“It is a much bigger kart to handle, but I’m putting in the training and I’ve grown a bit over the last few months, so I feel physically stronger now. We’ve been making steady progress; we’ve definitely improved in the national Super 1 Series, and although getting caught up in crashes at the start of races has held back my results, the pace has been there pretty much every weekend.”
It was a similar story in the European Championship qualifying round at PF International, with Rory consistently lapping inside the top five but finding himself rather taken aback by the ‘desperate’, dog-eat-dog, mercilessly aggressive hostilities out on-track. Three months later, the 13-year-old returned to the Lincolnshire circuit to pit himself against the very crème de la crème of young British driving talent at Kartmasters – his first outing in a kart for three weeks...but otherwise, infinitely more prepared.
“I didn’t have any great expectations for the weekend, to be honest,” he conceded, having tallied his first heat victory in Cadets in the blue riband event two years earlier. “I was just looking to continue learning, because it’s all about gaining experience at the moment.”
Confident at PF off the back of many laps there in Cadets, a set-up alteration unfortunately backfired in qualifying, leaving Rory just tenth on the grid for his two heat races – on the unenviable outside line. An excellent start in the first of them earned him fourth at the chequered flag, with fastest lap to his credit for good measure – whilst finding himself caught up in an opening lap mêlée in heat two dropped him well down the order, from where he recovered well to ninth.
“Starting on the outside at PF is all about luck,” he explained. “If you can get across to the inside for the first corner, you should be ok; if you can’t, it’s a bit of a gamble trying to be a hero by hanging on all the way around the outside – and that can lead to coming unstuck at the first hairpin...”
Beginning the pre-final sixth, the perilous outside line once again did for Rory’s chances as he completed the first lap placed only 13th and thereafter struggled to regain ground. At Kartmasters, though, the sole result that truly counts is that in the all-important grand final, and for maturely and impressively keeping his tail up and doggedly refusing to give in the fight, the Mick Barrett Racing ace would be well-rewarded indeed.
“I didn’t let what had happened in the pre-final knock my confidence at all,” he asserted. “It had just been one bad race, and I went into the grand final with the attitude that I didn’t really have much to lose. I was starting from tenth again, and I was already quite familiar with that position over the weekend! I thought I would be pleased to finish inside the top six – provided I got around the first lap ok this time...
“I couldn’t get in at the first corner, which caused me to drop to 14th initially, but after things settled down, I managed to fight my way past a few people and got up to eighth. Two drivers ahead then crashed in the Complex and another one peeled off into the pits, so I gained three places there which put me fifth. Someone else had gone off the lap before, too, and I caught him right up; going through the right-hand part of the chicane he must have still had grass on his tyres, because he went straight on and that moved me up to fourth.
“I then saw that the front train of three karts wasn’t really pulling away, and I couldn’t believe I was catching them. I just treated it as any normal race, though, and tried not to get too nervous. I didn’t want to get involved in their battle too early, so I thought I would hold back slightly and see if any of them made a mistake or came together – and it did get a bit lively, with a bit of argy-bargy...I could see them turning round in their karts on the back straight and shaking fists at each other!
“Two laps from the end, Alex Gill overtook Sam Webster into the second hairpin, and I was able to follow him through – I saw Alex go down the inside and I thought, ‘I can have a bit of that as well!’ After that, because I had so much experience of racing at the front at PF in Cadets, I knew exactly what to do – and I only defended where I needed to, because if you defend all the way round the lap, it slows you down.
“I couldn’t believe it when I crossed the line in third. I could see my dad and the team leaning over the fence cheering, and having been fast enough all year but with no results to show for it for various reasons, I was really pleased to finally get one – and at Kartmasters, too! It’s the biggest meeting of the year, so it couldn’t really have been any better.”
That much is indisputable, and after spotting his opportunity and grabbing it with both hands, a rostrum finish was no less than he deserved. Closing right in at the end to take the flag a scant six tenths of a second adrift of the race-winner – demonstrating that fitness-wise, the Bucks speed demon is every bit a match for his adversaries – it was also an emotional result, given that his late grandfather, multiple British Karting Champion Bruno Ferrari, is annually honoured at the event with the presentation of a trophy in his memory.
A milestone achievement in his KF3 apprenticeship, it is all starting to click and come together for Rory Cuff, and as he bids to go from strength-to-strength, he looks well on-track to succeed.
“I’ve got more confidence now, and I think I’ve made a few people on the grid more aware of me, too,” he concluded. “A lot of people had looked at me before and thought, ‘oh, he’s just a Cadet coming up, we can bully him around’; I think I’ve shown they can’t do that anymore...”
