Photo: Andrew Hutchison
Last Friday, the 12th of December, I had my first ever drive in an open wheel racing car, at Barbagallo Raceway. This first drive in a Formula Ford is the first step out of karting, and into open wheel racing cars. There are a few main differences separating the kart from the Formula Ford. It has a 4-speed manual gearbox, 7x the power, 5x the weight, and twice the speed. The aim of the first session in the Formula Ford was purely to grasp the technique of driving a manual gearbox race car. The most important of which is the heel-toe technique, this is where the driver must operate all three pedals when down shifting to avoid compression lock when downshifting. For example, coming up to a slow corner at high speed you must ‘blip’ the throttle whilst changing down the gear. After I have grasped these techniques I will then put my focus toward setting fast lap times and becoming competitive, with the possibility of a race weekend mid 2015. I would like to send a huge thanks to dad for organising all the new race gear, and booking a session at the track. I would also like to thank all my sponsors, because it is their support which provides me with opportunities like this.
