JUNIOR SENIOR MOVE THEIR FEET
Junior Saloon boss tells Graham Keilloh how he’s taking the matter of youngsters getting senior race opportunities into his own hands
For any driver looking to progress in their career, just how you can make the next step is a perennial – and difficult – question. It’s particularly so for budding teenage talent.
Junior Saloon Car Championship boss Dave Beecroft has taken the matter into his own hands, by sharing a Seat Cupra, run by Beecroft’s Orex Competition team, with 18-year-old JSCC racer Harry Rice in Britcar Trophy this season, starting at Silverstone last weekend.
Rice won JSCC’s scholarship in 2019 and competed with Orex in JSCC since. “[We] got halfway through the [2021] year and we couldn’t break out of that midfield group,” Beecroft tells Motorsport News, “so having a chat to his mum and dad I said ‘let’s stop doing this now, let’s save the budget and we’ll go and do the Britcar Trophy the following year’.
“Mum and dad, Terry and Lynda, help us with the hospitality and stuff in the Juniors so all [we’re] one big happy family. We [Beecroft and Rice] get on really well, which helps. It’s [the Britcar venture] just one of those natural things that happens.”
For GT World Challengeaspiring Rice, the Britcar ‘next step’was especially appreciated. He tried the Seat at Blyton Park in advance. “Since then the car’s had a complete new rollcage, it’s been tuned and changed so much,” Rice tells MN. “Friday was our first actual test in the car in its fullrace spec. Still learning the way it likes to be driven.”
It’s certainly a step from
JSCC’s Saxo. “It’s got twice the power, a turbo and heavier,” Rice notes. “You have to be careful and gentle.”
For Beecroft too it represented something of a driving comeback, having had his own bug re-bitten by competing in Britcar Trophy in late 2020. “I thought ‘before I get any older, I’d better do something’,” he laughs.
Their debut weekend aim was to finish, and they did so twice, despite a big delay in Race 2 sorting a brake problem.
And Beecroft hopes it’s just the start in another sense too, as from next year he plans to offer opportunities to more
JSCC racers.
He explains: “We want to expand into Britcar with probably a three-car team: two Seats in Class 3 and I want to build a Class 1 car for Harry. I’ve just had confirmation from the technical guys that the car I’m thinking about we can use.”
Beecroft outlines too that Rice’s gains won’t just be in his driving: “I want to teach him how to develop a car as well. You always learn more on a race weekend, and Harry’s learnt a lot [this weekend]. Next time he drives it he’ll feel all the differences so moving forward in his career he will know what’s needed to make cars better.”
Rice concludes: “We’re starting at the bottom and just trying to make our way up. We’re planning to get faster and faster all season and become stronger and stronger as a team.
“It’s nice to have someone familiar in the car with you that you trust.” ■