Andy Richardson made a solid start to his single-seater career at Brands Hatch on his debut weekend in the Dunlop MSA Formula Ford Championship of Great Britain; the series that launched the careers of such illustrious names as Ayrton Senna and Jenson Button.The South Lincolnshire-based 21-year-old went into the opening meeting of the season very much on the back foot, having only confirmed his entry into the championship on the Thursday prior to the event.With the Richardson Racing team only taking delivery of the car on arrival at the Kent circuit on Thursday evening, the first meeting of the year became a test session to allow both driver and team to learn as much as possible about the Ford EcoBoost-powered Mygale.Despite being forced to miss the first test session on Friday with a battery issue, Andy was able to hit the track in the second session to sample his new car for the first time ahead of qualifying.Improving his lap times from testing, Andy qualified twelfth for each of the three races and then set about the challenge of his maiden single-seater race in challenging conditions that saw drivers forced to battle against snow showers and cold temperatures.Again lowering his lap times and bringing the gap to the pacesetters down by a second, Andy started his Formula Ford career with a solid tenth place having come out on top of a race long battle with Neil Winn.Andys pace improved again in race two as he moved forwards to run in the midfield, with a strong start to the race seeing him involved in a battle for a place in the top five.Sadly, as the second race wore on, Andy started to suffer with graining on his tyres and slipped back to eighth spot at the finish, with that tyre wear then having an impact on his chances in race three.
Although the tyre problems meant he crossed the line twelfth, the debutant was able to achieve his pre-weekend goal of bringing home three finishes to maximise his time behind the wheel of his new car.
The three finishes also ensure that he heads away from the opening weekend of the season sitting tenth in the championship standings.When you consider that we only saw the car for the first time on Thursday night, I think we can be really pleased with the way the weekend has gone, Andy said. We improved our lap times throughout and got a lot closer to the pace as we spent more time on track, which is encouraging for us.
We came close to a really good result in race two before the tyres started to go away from me, but some of that was down to the fact that other teams have more knowledge about which way to go with set-up to prevent that happening. That is something that we have learned about during the weekend, and building our knowledge base was a big part of our first outing with the car.Comparing testing on Friday to where we were by race two, weve made big steps forward and we know there is more speed in the car and more speed in me. We just need to spend some proper time with the car to learn how to get the best from it and to work on things like set-up to see what impact different changes have.The testing restrictions that are in place will make that harder than if we could just go out and do a lot of running on track, but our aim is to keep improving when we got to Donington Park and to continue bringing the gap to the front-runners down.Andys father Gwyn, who oversees the Richardson Racing team, added his praise for the mechanics who had worked hard to get the new car on track for the Brands Hatch meeting.
The boys in the team did a great job this weekend to get the car prepared, he said, and even more so when you consider that they were working in sub-zero temperatures and using car headlights to guide them on Thursday night before the race truck arrived at the circuit.
It was certainly a baptism of fire going straight into a race weekend, but both the team and Andy have learned a lot that will help us when we get to Donington Park.
