Author: Anthony Conway

Hi all,

It was my last race weekend of the year this weekend just gone, and my first time having a decent engine behind me to race with I was looking forward to a good race with the potential for possibly my first decent result ever.

friday testing

We arrived early Friday morning with a new engine installed in the back and hopes high for a good result this time out. In the first quick session I had, I beat beat my previous qualifying by over 1.5 seconds and was making good progress throughout the day.

Despite limited running during the day I felt confident going into Saturday morning that I could improve my times and be competitive.

Early saturday – qualifying

Qualifying at 8:50 AM (Far too early for me!) went fairly decent on a freezing cold morning. No tow, and there was a small few mistakes in the lap and it put me P12, which was my highest qualifying to date. I knew I was a lot faster than that time had let on, though so I was happy to have a fun race ahead of me.

race 1 – bursting clouds

As soon as we lined up in paddock assembly the skies opened up from above, soaking the track and setting me up for my first full wet race. This was exciting for me since I had been running well in the wet test sessions I had done up until then.

Off the start I had a whole load of wheelspin which set me back 6 or 7 positions off the line, most of which were gained back fairly quickly, with one being made all the way around the outside of the hairpin! Quite proud of that one I must say.

After settling back into position after the bad start, I had made a gap to the group behind and was gaining on the car in front who was in P10 at the time. As I got closer, picking up on the occasional mistake I was getting to the point where I was ready to think about making a move and the engine unfortunately let go coming out of the hairpin, and just like that the weekend was over. I pulled the car to the grass after debtors to end the season prematurely on a weekend that should’ve yielded a good result.

I’ve also put together a short highlights video for your viewing, click here to watch.

final thoughts – concluding the season

After my first season of Formula Vee, I can be fully sure that I’ve done a lot of learning. There’s been ups and downs, and looking at the results sheets where I’m only classified for 2 of my seven races you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a bad year. But, I don’t think it was really. I’ve been unfortunate, I’ve made mistakes, but as the late Niki Lauda would say you always learn more from the losses than the victories. And so, while it is tough not to walk away with a good result from a season I can be fully sure that next season I will be ready to come back stronger than ever.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support throughout the year; friends, family, competitors, sponsors, and those of you who just like reading the things that I post on my far-too-serious social medias! 😆

It’s a long winter ahead and I look forward to getting back on track as early as possible next year.

-Anthony Conway

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Hi all,

This weekend certainly could have gone better, but I had a lot of fun anyway.

starting off on friday testing

We spent the morning sessions dialing in the engine again, to ensure we were getting the maximum out of it and before luch it seemed like all of the problems were finally gone and I was ready to start pushing the car, but a visit from some rainclouds ensured that the rest of the day was spent practising for the Irish Drift Championship rather than the Leinster trophy! Fun, surely! But not exactly practical to practise for a dry race day.

Despite this I felt ready to take on Qualifying on Sunday morning and extract the most I possibly could from the car.

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Sunday morning… quali hour

I was up early and ready to dive head first into a 15 minute qualifying session around the 3.6km Mondello Park International layout, but as soon as I left the pits there seemed to be a problem straight away that the throttle was sticking. I made my way around turn 1 and immediately had to pull in and stop the car without setting a lap time which gave me a nice starting position of P22 in both races. Delightful.

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race 1…

Starting from the back, I knew it would be a difficult race, but I set out to at least have some fun while I was at it, which I did. Getting involved with battles of 4 and 5 cars and getting some great experience with my racecraft. The race was red flagged after an incident not long after starting and with the 2 lap countback it was called after only 6 minutes of running so I have no idea who I was even in the mix with at that point.

Unfortunately my onboard camera hadn’t turned on so I can’t bring any onboard video for the race.

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race 2 – excitement at last!

Again starting in P-LAST i knew it wouldve been a difficult race but right off the line I was getting involved and battling with other drivers. A few laps in and I found myself locked in a close battle with Graham Carroll and Oliver Devlin.

It was nose to tail between the three of us with me in the middle for the first few laps before Oliver dropped off after a lock-up into the final corner leaving myself and Graham to battle it out for the whole rest of the race.

We were chopping and changing, swapping positions multiple times throughout the lap and I thought I had hatched up just the plan to get by once and for all, but as I was about to try it the chequered flag fell leaving less than half a second between us at the line. Almost 30km of racing and only 0.4s between us at the end, that was exciting.

You can watch the full race video below, but I will be making a shortened video with some of the more exciting parts later on.

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final thoughts –

That was in interesting weekend for sure, it was nice to get a really close battle for the whole race and was definitely a very beneficial experience. Kirkistown in 2 weeks time and with a new heart getting put into the car for this race I’m very excited to see what I can do without the typical engine woes I’ve been having all year.

Bring it on!

-Anthony Conway

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Hi all,

Another round of the 2020 Formula Vee championship wrapped up and it was certainly a lot more positive this time around than before, in Mondello Park where I got 2 DNFs and zero points. I learned a lot this weekend, and I can’t be too disappointed in it.

fresh start in Friday testing

Friday mornings going to Kirkistown are always far too early for someone like me, however 5:30a.m. up and ready to take on the day and the long journey to Down.

Out for the first lap on the damp & drying track I made it to debtors for the first time in almost 12 months and did the cardinal sin – lifted before the apex. The Formula Vee is such a different machine to the Ginetta and I was sure that it wouldn’t be flat out through the corner. However, I built up the confidence over the rest of the lap and next time around held the throttle to the floor and it felt like entering warp drive! (It did not feel nearly that cool by the end of the weekend, but great to have that new experience, haha!)

The sessions were decent and I spent the day just cutting down on times and making minor adjustments to the car.

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saturday – out for qualifying

I went out for Qualifying early Saturday morning after a cold night in the tent (and a nice hot chocolate to warm up!) and got a decent feel for the car right away, taking 7 tenths out of my best testing time and with no tow to give me sympathy for my fairly slow pace I was delighted to hear that I had qualified 11th overall and 3rd in class. Brilliant! Or so I thought.

As it turns out 8 people had not gotten a time recorded, so it might have been a bit of a fluke, but I could make something from this I was sure.

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Onto the b/c race… Or was it? – Qualifying again

I was so ready to take on the B/C race starting 11th and only 2 positions behind the Pole-sitter in class, but before the race we were all called to meet in regards to a timing issue and after a vote it was decided that we would re-run qualifying. This was the fairest option of any that we had and so we all got our hotlap hats on again and off we went.

It became clear during this session that the engine was quite a bit down on power, as I would wait to get in somebody’s slipstream and by the end of the straight the other car would be too far ahead to have any effect at all. However, I still cut another 0.650 off of my first qualifying time to get a 1:10.9 which landed me 17th overall. This was quite painful but I think I was getting as much as I could from the car.

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Onto the actual race…

In my short racing career I had never felt so nervous for a race as I did before this one, in paddock assembly I even felt weak in my stomach thinking about trying not to repeat what happened last time out in Mondello in turn 1. I know that I shouldn’t let these things affect me as much as it did and I ended up getting a bad start as a result and lost a position but after a clean turn 1 I was ready to take on the race.

It had showed to be a mistake to let the other driver ahead at the start as I got stuck behind for a few laps, faster in the corners, slower in the straights, it was like a game of cat and mouse. One of the laps, coming into colonial from around 4 maybe 5 car lengths back the gap opened up and I was past and made the gap over the following laps to almost 30 seconds

I’d say if I had’ve fought a bit harder at the start I could’ve been in a good position to take my maiden motorsport podium, however I have to be happy with P4 in class when I really wasn’t able to compete on the straights, of which there are a lot of in Kirkistown.

If you want to watch the race in it’s entirety, click here.

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conclusion

The engine will be something to take a look at over the winter, however I can be quite sure that my strength lies in the corners and the experience I got in Kirkistown has me feeling more comfortable than ever bringing the car to it’s limit. I feel like Mondello at the next race has the potential to be decent for me, being a more technical track and I couldn’t be more ready to take it on. Especially after the potential of the last race that I had there, running in P2 until a mistake put me out.

Only 2 weeks until we’re back, and I have 3 words for it;

Bring. It. On!

-Anthony Conway

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