Bucking the trend with full grids
Why Formula Ford 1600 is set for a bumper season in the UK in 2020
It is hard to escape the impact of Covid-19 and not only in the sense of health. The pandemic’s economic consequences have been many and this naturally has been felt in motorsport. Tales right now are everywhere of drivers, teams, cars and sponsors pulling out from this year’s delayed competition.
But on the UK national racing scene there might just be, with this cloud, a silver lining. The latest National Formula Ford 1600 season gets underway at Oulton
Park this weekend and, sharing with Northern FF1600, has long had a capacity 34-car grid, with reserves in addition, for its curtain-raiser. The number clamouring for a spot might have been even greater too, as some participants based abroad have had to stay away due to travel restrictions, such as John Svensson who intended to have three drivers. Kevin Mills with his eponymous frontrunning team reports an extra driver of his who didn’t fancy waiting on the reserve list, but would have got in if he had done so…
British Racing and Sports Car Club Formula Ford coordinator Ian Smith tells Motorsport News: “We have been on capacity in National [FF1600] before, Brands and Silverstone National, we were full as well at Knockhill. But somewhere like Oulton [it is more unusual].”
The Oulton line-up is stellar too. Low Dempsey Racing and Kevin Mills both have their own formidable driving trios, and over and above there is Luke
Cooper, the 2018 Castle Combe FF1600 champion, 2012 National runner-up and regular FF1600 frontrunner. There also is Oliver White, a multiple Champion of Brands winner and routine sharp-end protagonist in Formula Ford’s end-ofyear Festival (he was a third of a second off winning it in 2018) and Walter
Hayes Trophy. Adrian Campfield,
2011’s Walter Hayes winner, is back with Kevin Mills after almost a decade away from racing. GT4 racer Matt Cowley is also on the entry.
And it’s not only established additions. Alex Walker, who completed a part season in British Formula 4 last year with JHR Developments, has chosen a National Formula Ford campaign with
PWR1 Racing. His fellow 16-year-old Daniel Mackintosh, who was poised to compete in F4 this year before a sponsor’s withdrawal, will race with Oldfield Motorsport. Low Dempsey and
Kevin Mills boast young guns too.
And Mills is certainly relishing the season’s prospect, as he tells MN: “It’s the most competitive Formula Ford’s been in the last five or six years, it is absolutely bonkers. All the teams have got a good driver, some two, so it’s going to be an epic eight-round [race] battle, I can tell you. It’s going to be amazing.
“At Oulton with 34 cars, getting a good qualifying lap’s going to be really difficult. I can’t wait to get out there, it’s going to be a vintage season.”
Cooper agrees, telling MN: “It’s a really competitive grid, and you could be close to the pace and end up 10th on the grid.
It’s going to be some great racing.”
Mills has noticed the upturn in driver interest too: “Over the winter I had three drivers sorted, and then because they were from foreign countries when Covid started, two of them decided not to come. So then I was like ‘oh my God, going to have to rebuild this’. But actually it wasn’t very difficult at all to rebuild it. There seemed to be a lot of interest in Formula Ford and I’m back to a three-car team again in National and I’ve got four cars running in Castle Combe as well.”
So what’s going on? Well, we can quickly form a hypothesis. Formula Ford is, of course, a low-budget option, so it is likely attracting those who could not raise the money for other categories. Also the congested calendar has dictated the National FF1600 championship has only three meetings in 2020, and this is further easing competitors’ budgets and logistics.
For Cooper, finances were indeed key for him. He had been minded to switch to GT racing this year, but the impact on his budget from Covid has drawn him back to FF1600. He will now either complete the National or Combe 2020 season, and will take part in both categories’ opening rounds before deciding which to commit to. He took a first and second place in Combe’s recent season opener so a strong Oulton showing will give him, in his own words, a “difficult decision”. The National championship though is his priority.
Cooper says: “The way everything went it killed the budget for this year and unfortunately I lost a sponsor for this year as well so that was like a big whammy. My sponsor’s a hotel company and they were probably one of the worst hit by the whole thing.
“But the good thing with Formula Ford is it is still affordable and we have a car available so it was fairly easy for me to get back into it. It’s somewhere in the region of five times more expensive for me to do something outside of Formula Ford.
“If they’d tried to cram more rounds into it [the National championship] we wouldn’t have really been able to consider it.”
White meanwhile is in 2020 fulfilling his long-time ambition to complete his first full National FF1600 season, and the truncated three-meeting National calendar is what tipped the balance.