Clay Richards' Race Report: Australian Formula Ford Championship - Round 2
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Clay Richards' Race Report: Australian Formula Ford Championship - Round 2

By Shannons - 23 March 2022

Round 2 of the Australian Formula Ford Championship was held at Phillip Island as a support series for the first round of the Shannons National Series. I was really looking forward to this round as I've had success in the recent past by winning round 3 of the Victorian Formula Ford Championship at Phillip Island in 2021, so there was a lot to look forward to.

Dad and I packed the trailer on the Wednesday night so we could leave for the following night after work, from our home in Coldstream it was an hour and a half drive to get to where we we're staying and both my Mum and my Sister Priya also came along for the drive.

Friday morning Dad and I got to the track to unpack the trailer and get setup for practice, this weekend was a little bit different in terms of the schedule we only had one practice session in the morning and Qualifying in the afternoon while on saturday we had race 1 and race 2 and race 3 on Sunday morning.

Practice was about getting back into a rhythm in the car and getting used to the fast flowing corners of track I placed 7th out of 18 drivers which was a great start to the weekend. The car was lacking a bit of rear grip and was loosing traction off the corner we decided to soften the rear anit roll bar which would give the car a bit more rear grip.

Our last session for Friday was Qulifying, the most important thing about qualifying at the Phillip Island track is that it is very important to get behind a driver for a tow. The tow is a slipstream the way it works is the driver in front of you is getting all the air resistance and "punching a hole" for the driver behind so they get no air resistance resulting in the car behind to get a speed avantage, it was worth 1.5 seconds in our cars which is massive. I ended the session in 8th and only 0.4 seconds off pole position another 0.2 and I would've been in the top 3, after the session we also changed to a more softer rear anti roll bar.

Race 1 was held on Saturday morning I got a good start and was battling in the lead group the was feeling a lot better compared to friday practice and qualifying after the changes we made however as the race progressed I started loosing touch with the lead pack I crossed the line in 9th we found out in parc ferme that we had the tyre pressures up way too high throughout the weekend, when the tyre pressure are too high or too low then what they're expected to be the car does not perform how it should and you loose heaps of time.

On Saturday afternoon we had race 2 this time starting on much lower tyre pressures the car was a rocket from the get go after dropping to 11th at the start of the race I moved up to 7th and batting in the lead, I finished the race in 5th position with the 2nd fastest time of the race and only 0.03 off the fastest time.

Sunday morning I was feeling really confident after race 2 on Saturday we did however make a change to the rear anti roll bar to make it a little softer, I got a great start once again and was battling in the lead group although the car felt good I felt like I was still lacking the pace and started to fall off the leading pack although I crossed the line in 8th I was promoted to 6th after a few drivers got penalised for passing under yellow flags. For the weekend overall I was 5th on points for the round and 5th in the championship and well into championship contention.

Our next race will be at Winton for the 3rd round of the Australian Formula Ford Championship in late May, Winton is a track I've driven on plenty of times and it's a track that I'm really comfortable on. Thanks everyone for the support throughout the weekend cannot wait to get back out on track again.