Amy raring for return to action at Buxton
ACCRINGTON stock car racer Amy Duckett is set to make a return to the track this Sunday for the first time in almost a year, writes Dave Goddard.
The 25-year old, a warehouse operative by trade, will be competing at Buxton Raceway in Derbyshire in the small but spectacular StoxKart class, one of the UK’s most popular and close-fought forms of short oval motorsport.
Amy said: “My dad raced Formula 2 Stock Cars in the 80s and 90s, he then retired for a few years and came back racing with my older brother in 2007 and 2008. My twin sister Laura then started racing in the Ministox class at Warton Stock Car Club, and for a couple of years my younger sister Emma joined her for a few meetings.”
Amy would continue her family’s tradition of short track motorsport when she made her StoxKarts debut in a hired kart as a 17th birthday present, but she really shot to fame in 2013 when she entered the StoxKart Ladies Championship at the Wheels Park oval in Birmingham. Not only did she raiser over £300 for the benevolent fund for oval racing drivers, but she drove brilliantly to win the event.
Since her career high, Amy has raced a few meetings a year in the StoxKarts, and also followed her family by joining the Formula 2 Stock Cars in 2018 alongside partner Josh Caine, racing at venues including Barford in north east England and her home track of Belle Vue in Manchester.
Buxton Raceway has not always been kind to Amy however, as one StoxKart meeting in 2017 found her upside down. Amy said: “I’d come into the turn too fast and with the StoxKarts having no suspension, the kart started to bounce and the front end just gripped to the tarmac and I flipped over! It was an experience and I got out laughing, lucky for me though it was on the last lap of the final.”
She will certainly be aiming for better fortunes this coming weekend as she contests her first meeting since last September, when she raced a hired kart at the now sadly closed Stoke Speedway.
The StoxKarts may be small, powered by 390cc
Honda engines and with direct chain drive to the rear axle, but they are very spectacular and contact during racing is allowed as the drivers push and shove each other around the tight quarter mile oval tracks.
With the faster and more experienced drivers starting from the back of the grid every time and having to fight their way through, tons of overtaking and close racing is guaranteed every time.
Amy will compete at her return meeting at Buxton Raceway on Sunday 9th August, racing alongside around 30 other intrepid drivers. Spectators are allowed at the event, and more information and details of how to book tickets can be found at www.buxtonraceway.com
For more info on the StoxKarts or if you would like to hire a kart and have a go yourself, visit www. stoxkarts.co.uk
CRICKET
STUART Broad has revealed he was ‘so down’ after being dropped for the first Test match against West Indies that he considered retiring.
Broad, 34, who claims he is bowling as well as ever and has never been fitter, returned to the side for the second and third Tests and played a key role as England hit back to win the series 2-1.
“Were there thoughts of retirement going round my head? 100 per cent. Because I was so down,” he told the Mail on Sunday.
“I was expecting to play, which is always a bit of a dangerous thing in sport but I felt I deserved to play.”
Broad explained that the coronavirus restrictions placed on all the players during the Test series did not help as he tried to come to terms with being dropped for the first Test in Southampton.
“I have not really told anyone this but I was so down that week of the first Test,” he said.
“I was really low. I was stuck in that hotel. I wasn’t playing, I was staying in a single room. I didn’t sleep for