Formula Ford’s days as Senna’s starting point are long ago, but MN’s deputy editor finds two people returning it closer to its old glory “We’ve got to get this right. Formula Ford’s been languishing in recent years”
Time was the path was clear. For motor racing stars of tomorrow coming out of karting – Ayrton Senna et al – their first car racing step was Formula Ford. But that well now seems dry. There’s been a proliferation of other championships, plus you can’t get a licence to race in FF1600 until you’re 16, a year after you can dive into British Formula 4 or GB4. There are junior car-racing championships you can start two years earlier. Modern-car Formula Ford is flailing, struggling for entry numbers.
But at MotorSport Vision Racing’s season launch day at Brands Hatch last week, I encountered two people determined to do something about it. Stalwart FF1600 racer Adam Fathers has three sons aged eight and under in karting. Organisers of January’s Rye House karting awards were looking for cars to display. Fathers took his Formula Ford along.
And he was astonished by the reaction. Karters and parents alike were captivated by the single-seater machine. But Fathers discovered something else.
“It was surprising the people that didn’t know of Formula Ford,” he tells Motorsport News. “I don’t expect everyone to know, but they’ve been karting for at least a year and they didn’t know what the formula was. They’ve heard of Formula 4, Formula 3, because they see it on the telly…”
He found another misconception. “The dads thought that it was going to cost them half a million pounds to go racing in one,” he says. “It’s not. I know dads that have spent far more in karting than if they did a season in
Formula Ford.” Indeed, a Formula Ford budget of about £30,000 is about a tenth of that in British F4.
All this gave Fathers determination to do something to help. And another similarly determined Formula Ford stalwart Alan Bowles heard what Fathers was up to, and hooked up with him.
Fathers regularly this year will go to kart events with his FF1600 machine to promote the category, while Bowles is getting other teams and manufacturers onboard to do the same.
Bowles also has got together with race car simulation concern SIM Motorsport to “build a bridge from Formula Ford via karting and produce a structured path, so that people can do plenty of sim work rather than track time until they find their level in terms of ability, and then when they’re ready, get out on track.
“We need to win a percentage of karters that want to move into circuit racing,” Bowles continues to MN. “We need new blood into the championship, because Formula Ford relies on too many people who have loved it from the golden days and have stayed involved. We need to secure its long-term future.
“If we can attract 5-10% even, it’ll be worthwhile doing. It needs structuring, we’ve got to get this right. Formula Ford’s at a crossroads now and it needs to be taken forward for the next generations to enjoy. It’s been languishing the last four or five years and it needs to become more accessible to more people.”
On the minimum age, Bowles is lobbying Motorsport UK to reduce it to 15. He reports the governing body as “very receptive”.
“All I’m trying to achieve is a level playing field so that people have a choice. If we can offer that choice, they’ll come and see that our budgets are less,” he adds.
And as for why is this important, it’s not merely nostalgia. “You will learn a lot more from a season or two of Formula Ford than you ever will jumping in a slicks-andwings car, which can quite easily bamboozle [you on] set up,” Bowles explains. “A year or two in this will certainly stand you in good stead to move up.”
Fathers concurs: “You’re learning how to set up the race car and you’re working with your mechanic. And [you’re learning] how to drive a car without the aerodynamics. That’s why it’s such a good learning path.”
Bowles expands on the point: “We need to make sure the Formula Ford is the first rung of the ladder so that people can put their toe in the water and see if it’s for them.
“The other single-seater categories are too expensive for people to take that initial jump without it being a major fall if something goes wrong or it’s not for them.
“[And] in Formula Ford you can probably have a budget for three or four or five years. You’ve got a much better chance of people staying in our sport.”
GRAHAM KEILLOH