Hi all,
My first weekend of Formula Vee officially finished, 0 points on the board. Not good, to put it lightly. Although, that being said, there are some positives to take away from the weekend.
starting off with qualifying…
The qualifying session felt good from inside the car, only a little bit of fine tuning in the engine needed so I was a little down on power and ended up P20 & P21 for race 1 and 2 and P8 in class for both races. That was quite disheartening to hear, but I was determined not to let that kind of pace define the weekend.
taking the start of race 1…
Race 1 started off slowly, just settling into position a bit, with some swapping around on lap 1. It seemed that after a few laps there were some other drivers to pick off with some spinning or retiring completely from the race. I found myself tucking in behind the #34 machine, who unbeknownst to me was the class leader at the time. So I, sat in P2 in class, began planning my way around the green car when almost out of nowhere Robert Fleming came flying up behind. After some swapping around and nice racing with him, I made a mistake into turn 1, with 30 seconds left on the clock and buried it in the gravel. My first podium and a potential win sent hurtling into the stones.
race 2, disaster strikes again…
Pulling up to the grid in 21st spot I was ready to take on another race, and hopefully make it as good as the previous one, bar the costly mistake. Maybe too ready to take it on.
As we pulled off the line the lads in front were 4 wide, and I lifted off the throttle to try and let them do their thing, braking early too. Obviously still not early or hard enough, as I got closer, they still got slower and eventually my right front made contact with the left rear of another car, and as it goes, I was launched over the top of 2 cars. The car seemed okay so I asked if I could take the re-start, but unfortunately I could not. I’m glad everybody walked away from it okay, but it’s hard not to beat myself up over a lap 1 turn 1 accident. I won’t post the full video, but here’s an idea of what my view from the cockpit was shortly after:
conclusion
I need to work on making mistakes in the race. It was an absolute shame to have thrown away not only 1 podium which was surely in the bag, but the whole potential of the second race, it’s fully clear what I need to do (or rather, not do). I’m not going to let this slow me down, if anything it’s only a reason to push more. Importantly, learning from these mistakes and not doing them again. On to the next one.
-Anthony Conway
sponsored by:
Anthony Conway Racing 