with best Clio Cup results to-date

Ash Hand bounced back from a nightmare weekend at Oulton Park to register the finest results of his fledgling car racing career to-date in the fifth round of the fiercely-contested Renault UK Clio Cup at Croftmeaning the talented young Nuneaton karting graduate can enter the summer break with his head held high.

Having made a genuine breakthrough in performance terms at Thruxtoncruelly being denied a top five finish by electrical gremlins on the very last lapHand travelled to Oulton brimful of optimism, only for persistent engine woes to leave him down-on-power throughout and lapping a full second adrift of the leading pace.

He showcased his magnificent racecraft and overtaking prowess to miraculously scrape a point for tenth position in race one from all the way down in 18th on the starting gridbut then suffered the ignominy of being unceremoniously shunted into the barriers by a rival towards the end of the second outing whilst duelling over an uncharacteristically lowly 17th place. The incident was symptomatic of the Team Pyro aces fortunes in Cheshire, and sent him tumbling down the points standings from ninth to 12thhis hitherto upward momentum abruptly stalled.

What followed was a fortnight of strenuous efforts to rectify the issues before the ITV4-televised, British Touring Car Championship-supporting Clio Cup rocked up at Croft in North Yorkshire for its next meeting, where Hand was targeting a return to the top ten as a bare minimum.

Oulton was just painful, he reflected. I was definitely glad to see the back of that weekend! Still, I quickly shifted my attentions to Croft, which is a mega tracka proper drivers circuit. Its tricky to master and a lot of it is about confidence, but once you get all the apexes hooked-up and make it flow, you can build up a really strong rhythm.

In evidence of his assertion, the highly-rated Maple Park hotshot threatened the front row in qualifying at one stage, but admitted to failing to get the best out of his tyres as others went faster on new rubber. He wound up eighth for race one and tenth for race two in his Sigma and QTS-backed Clio Renaultsport 200still a big step forward from Oultonand had already made up ground in the opening encounter when the red flags flew for an accident at the exit of the chicane. Gridded seventh for the re-start, he takes up the story...

It was probably one of the hardest races Ive ever been in, he confessed. There was some really rough driving out there, and you had to try to be both patient and aggressive at the same time, which isnt an easy balance to strike! Towards the end, I was at the back of a three-way scrap over fifth with Paul Rivett and Ant Whorton-Eales, and I knew my best chance of gaining at least one of those positions would be to ease off a little and save my tyres for the last lap, which would give me more grip when they really began battling.

I stuck to that strategy and hung back slightly, and sure enough, going into the last corner, Whorton-Eales went out wide to try to get the cutback on Rivett onto the pit straight. I saw my opportunity and flicked my car up the inside and over the kerb to snatch sixth. I was really pleased with that.

Justifiably so, and the timesheets bore testament to Hands startling raw pace, as he lapped third-quickest of the 23 distinctly high-calibre Clio Cup competitorsand fastest of anyone through the first two-thirds of the lapto tally his best finish of the season thus far. Just 24 hours later, he promptly matched it.

I got a good start in race two and was seventh going into Turn One on the inside line, but I received several knocks through the first sequence of corners which dropped me to 11th, recounted the 19-year-old. That was really frustrating, but I didnt let it discourage me and focussed on fighting my way through. After I caught and passed my team-mate Alex Morgan for seventh on lap three, I set about chasing the leading pack.

I had narrowed the gap from 1.9 seconds to 1.4 seconds when I came across some grass on the racing line at Sunny In on lap six. As I turned into the corner, my left-rear tyre must have clipped it and it pitched me briefly off the circuit. Somehow I managed to hold onto it, but it cost me a couple of seconds and by the time I caught the front group up again, it was too late. I was literally right on their tail by the chequered flag. It was nice to show that we had the pace, but without the delay, it could have got seriously interesting towards the end...

Regularly the fastest of the front-runnerslapping as much as eight tenths of a second quicker than the leader on occasionthe manner in which Hand rapidly regained his composure like a seasoned pro following his mid-race scare and didnt let it throw him off his stride for even a moment was impressive indeed to behold.

Wasting no time at all in reprising his devastating turn-of-speed, the Warwickshire teenager swiftly shook off the challenge posed by Morganthird in the title chase and a race-winner this yearand his superb charge saw him take the chequered flag less than 1.8 seconds shy of victory, with a best lap a mere tenth of a second away from the outright benchmark.

There was subsequently a late bonus when the fifth-placed finisher was penalised for straight-lining the chicane, elevating Hand to sixth and seeing him climb to the fringes of the championship top ten in 11th position. He is only 22 points adrift of the top eighta deficit that he has more than halved since Oultonand sits an excellent fifth in the Graduate Cup with three rounds remaining.

Whats more, he has proved to his adversaries that his stellar Thruxton form was no flash in the pan and that his burgeoning pre-Oulton momentum has well-and-truly returnedand above all, that inexperienced as he may still be, he is now every inch a bona fide contender.

I would have liked to have come away with a better finish in the second race, but they were still two very solid resultsespecially around a circuit that Id feared would be my least successful of the season after crashing there during winter testing and only being able to complete a handful of laps, mused the series leading car racing rookie.

Thats tremendously encouraging, and its a great way to go into the summer break. The other drivers can see that Im serious and that Im not simply here to make up the numbers, so the key will be to keep working hard and focus on consistently moving up the order over the remainder of the campaign.