White endures miserable Walter Hayes

Formula Ford regular Oliver White suffered dismal luck at last weekend’s Walter Hayes Trophy, with two car failures preventing him from starting the event.

Frontrunner White entered initially in his Medina Motorsport-run Van Diemen RF01, but was forced to park that machine after an engine failure on Thursday testing. White was then loaned an RF80 by Richard Tarling for testing on Friday, but that suffered too.

“The cam follower on my original engine disintegrated and wrecked that, so it was really nice of Richard to help us out, but we had bad luck with the RF80 too,” said White.

“Testing in the RF80 was great. It was softer than the modern cars I’m used to so was a real laugh to throw into corners in the wet, but we heard a sound that turned out to be a piston knocking. We could have done the event, but I didn’t want to risk damaging a borrowed car and all of the good engines are already in cars. We’ll be back next year and we’ll focus our entire year around the Hayes, to make the car as good as possible.”