Will on the podium at Thruxton

Rounds 3 and 4 of the Renault UK Championship took place at Thruxton on 25/26 April. Thruxton is a very high speed circuit and with limited pre-race testing is a difficult track to do well on, especially for Rookies. However, Will produced an outstanding effort in the first Qualifying session on a wet track to take P2 on the grid with pole only being snatched from him in the last few seconds of the session by a driver who had changed to slicks as the track dried. The second qualifying session wasn’t so successful with a few problems resulting in a P19 slot.

Race 1 saw Will take his first podium of the FRUK Championship with an outstanding 3rd place. Having dropped a couple of places off the start he clawed his way back with some outstanding overtaking manuovres and almost grabbed 2nd place on the last lap.

Race 2 was always going to be difficult from P19 but again in a series of great moves, he made 9 places on the first 3 laps to be in P10. With more place gains likely Will’s race was derailed by an incident as the Safety car was deployed following an accident elsewhere on the track. The field dramatically slowed behind the Safety Car and the concertina effect saw him swerve to avoid the car in front and spin dropping him back to 17th. After the resumption of racing, he again made 4 places but was then caught up in another incident in the last couple of laps dropping him to the back of the field.

Will said after the race, “I was really pleased with Quali 1 and Race 1, to take a podium early in the season is a good result and demonstrates my potential. Quali 2 and Race 2 were always going to be a challenge but I enjoyed the racing and overtaking and made a lot of headway. I was confident of bettering my worst result from Brands, 9th place, but it was a very hectic race with a lot of incidents and unfortunately I just got caught up in that”.