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The Grid.co.uk the national & club motor racing website - est1998 |
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The Grid.co.uk the national & club motor racing website - est1998 |
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pics Chris Walker/www.kartpix.net
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mail your news to editorthegrid@yahoo.co.uk Bridgestone Cup domination ends in heartbreak for rapid Lennox-Lamb
Jordon travelled to Lonato near Garda intending to treat the event as both a glorified testing session for the new 2010 Birel Motorsport chassis, as well as an opportunity to prepare for the WSK International Series curtain-closer at the same circuit on November 1st. Despite having competed there before, though, with the likes of former Monaco Kart Cup winner Max Goff, fellow Brit James Dixon, Australian Mitchell Gilbert, the Energy brigade and the Ghirelli brothers all present – not to mention his own front-running Birel team-mate, home hero Matteo Viganò – he knew it was going to be no Sunday afternoon stroll in the park. “There were some very good drivers there,” he acknowledged, “so I knew it would be quite a tough meeting, but still we were expecting to be inside the top five. I enjoy the circuit; it’s similar in a way to PF International in England, in that it’s quite easy to be fast but it’s always very close – if you can gain two tenths of a second on someone, you’re doing well. It’s dominated by hairpins, and you’ve got to be very smooth and consistent – and you definitely need to have a good package behind you.” That Jordon certainly did, and after continuing to use the practice sessions and qualifying for predominantly testing purposes – saving the speed for when it really counted – the Bedford star initially wound up sixth-fastest of the 42 KF2 class competitors entered, and firmly in the ballpark. From there, he would transform fourth-place grid slots in his two heat races to close runner-up finishes both times, passing Mans Grenhagen to chase down Viganò in the first and setting fastest lap in the second for good measure. “I dropped back at the start of heat two,” he recounted. “It’s quite difficult at Lonato, because the first corner is a left followed by a right, meaning whilst pole is on the left-hand side it should really be on the right. Drivers are always trying to get across, which can lead to some bad crashes. We were quite happy with two second places, though; the tyres were coming on brilliantly which meant we weren’t having to put too much load on the engines at all – and we knew we still had a bit of time in-hand.” Third in the intermediate rankings and feeling ‘really confident’, Jordon stuck to his game plan of keeping things steady in the pre-final and keeping his powder dry, battling back from an early tussle to regain ground on the three runaway leaders. Lapping consistently the quickest of anyone on the track, the 17-year-old recovered to fourth at the chequered flag – and then in the all-important grand final later in the day, he would demonstrate the teamwork ethos that has made him such a valued member of Birel’s attack, and also the devastating raw pace that has for some time marked him out as a driver to genuinely keep an eye on over the years to come. “I pushed Nicolaj Møller Madsen through at the start and we both got past Viganò,” he recounted, “but I then backed off to let Matteo back in again so he wouldn’t get messed around in the pack at the first corner. We both passed Møller Madsen and began pulling away, and later on in the race I passed Matteo for the lead. “Shortly afterwards, his engine broke – he just lost all power and ultimately had to go into the pits. After that there were about eight laps left to go, and I was just trying to make sure I brought it home. I was lapping two or three tenths quicker than the next-fastest driver, then exactly the same thing suddenly happened to my engine as had happened to Matteo’s...” It was a crushing blow, depriving Jordon as it did of what would have been a superb result and arguably the finest trophy in his 2009 collection – as a better fastest lap time than the eventual top four underlined his superiority. The cause of the failures was traced back to the pistons, but preferring to look forwards rather than back, the Kimbolton Road ace has warned his rivals that they would do well to watch out in the WSK finale. Admitting to still not having shown his and Birel’s true hand even in the Bridgestone Cup grand final, he is clearly revved up to end the year in style. “It was gutting not to win and I was really disappointed afterwards,” he mused. “It would have been really good to have had the Bridgestone Cup on my CV – and it would have been nice for Birel to have got a one-two. It was a shame about what happened, but it was just one of those things at the end of the day – and everyone could see how fast we were. When we turn up for the WSK now, I know we’ll be on the pace.
Lennox-Lamb endures wild and bumpy ride for national podium
Jordon came out of the starting blocks fighting back at the beginning of the campaign at PF International in March with a double victory to get his championship challenge off to a perfect start, but since then there has been little cause for joy – until now. And even then he had to work hard for it. “I’ve always been very fast around Whilton,” he explained, “but at the start of the weekend we were shocking – we were really struggling with the kart, and things weren’t looking good at all. It just wouldn’t ride the bumps, and Whilton is a very bumpy circuit! “I would get near to a bump and the kart would just go all over the place, which made it really difficult for me to get on the power early. On the straights I was losing four or five kart-lengths a lap and we were a second off the pace to begin with – I think even the KF3s were going quicker than me! In qualifying I was giving it my all and pushing unbelievably hard – so to come in and find I was just seventh left me pretty gutted to be honest.” Be that as it may, less than three tenths of a second off the pace in the hotly-contested, 14-strong quality-over-quantity KF1 class field was an undoubted improvement on practice form, and suggested that all hope may not yet be lost. But then the heat races didn’t exactly go to plan either... “We didn’t do the heats, for two reasons,” the 17-year-old continued. “One was that we only had one good engine, so we wanted to preserve that – it wouldn’t have been worth going out with the second engine, because I would just have looked stupid. “The other reason was that we thought the only way we could get any benefit out of the weekend would be to try and save the tyres for the finals. Because I was having to push so hard to keep up with the other drivers, and because of the way the kart was handling, we were wearing the tyres quite badly. Unlike some of the other tracks we’ve been to this year, new tyres help quite a lot at Whilton Mill, and are probably worth around two tenths a lap.” Based on Jordon’s qualifying pace, that kind of extra boost he knew would likely haul him right into contention – and so it was to prove. After plenty of midnight oil was burned overnight on Saturday, the result on Sunday morning was a kart that was ‘still not outstanding but definitely an improvement’ – and from plum last on the grid for the pre-final, the Topkart ace would consummately and impressively make the best of a bad job. “I thought I could hopefully do my normal thing and come from the back to the front, which I find really exciting and challenging,” he mused. “I got past two drivers at the start, but then going up the hill everybody pulled three kart-lengths out on me. “At that point I was thinking ‘this might not go to plan’, but through the race I worked my way up to fifth, which I didn’t think was too bad in the circumstances. I was really struggling to defend on the straights, and I would just get driven completely round the outside of at times. “After that, I wasn’t expecting to do much better in the grand final to be honest. We had changed something on the engine in-between the two races, and I dropped back to ninth at the start. That meant I had to try some pretty wild manoeuvres to fight my way back up again, and I managed to get up to third in the end. “The last lap was a bit hectic; Luke Wright and Mark Litchfield were really having a blast at each other, and I just took advantage of it by nipping past Mark. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite get Luke as well because he had more power than I did, but I was still really pleased to get a podium given how the weekend had begun.” It was indeed a satisfying result for the Kimbolton Road teenager, and one that leaves him second in the standings with three double-header meetings still remaining. Having not ascended the top step of the rostrum for almost four months, he is clearly desperate to regain ground – and round four of seven at Nutts Corner in Ireland towards the end of August could give him just that opportunity. “If we can solve the engine issues we’ve been having, then we should be able to be more competitive than we have been recently,” Jordon concluded. “I think Ben Cooper will be quite difficult to catch because he has the works support of Tony Kart and Vortex behind him, but we will just keep working at it. “We are going to go to Nutts Corner and do a bit of testing first so I can re-acclimatise myself with the track, because it’s been almost six years since I last raced there. It’s a very fast and flowing circuit, though, and one that’s quite exciting to drive from what I remember, and I’m definitely looking forward to going back.” And, no doubt, to getting himself back on the victory trail into the bargain...
Lennox-Lamb tells European rivals: Catch me if you can!
Facing a 67-strong field populated by KF2 class front-runners of the calibre of Ben Cooper, Brandon Maisano, Chris Lock and Jordan Chamberlain, Jordon travelled to Angerville in France confident of being able to hold his own, if entering the unknown to some extent having never before so much as set eyes upon the Île-de-France circuit close to Paris. He would waste little time in getting to grips with it and making his mark. “We went to test there before, which went well,” he related. “With the standard engines in we were fast – and the main thing really was just to go there for the race weekend and make sure we qualified for the summer championship. “I thought qualifying would be a big issue and that the racing could be a real nightmare because the track is so narrow, with only about three real overtaking spots over the course of the lap. I really liked driving it, though; it’s tight and twisty, with some corners that take a while to get used to, but once you get it all right it’s really fun to drive. “After being consistently inside the top two in the practice sessions we had high hopes of winning, and in timed qualifying I went fastest by quite a chunk in the first session. That left me thinking I wouldn’t need to go out in the second session, but the temperature picked back up again and Maisano just pipped me on his last lap. I was gutted. On the plus side, he’d had to push pretty hard to do that, which meant his tyres were more worn than mine.” Nonetheless, second place amongst such exalted company – a scant five hundredths shy of pole position – was nothing to be sniffed at, with his Top Kart mount evidently working far better on the Dunlop tyres used at CIK-FIA level than it does on the Bridgestone rubber stipulated in the WSK International Series. And to rub further salt into the opposition’s wounds, Jordon would go on to make his four heat races look positively easy. Having dropped back as far as seventh in the first of them, he soaked up sustained pressure from Spanish rival Toni Alarcón to take the chequered flag almost four seconds clear of any of his pursuers following a penalty for on-the-road winner Max Goff. There would be two further comprehensive victories later on, but any hopes the 17-year-old may have had of making it a rare clean sweep were swept away by officialdom after he too found himself controversially penalised ten seconds for being adjudged to have crossed the start-line a scant 30cm in front of pole-sitter Maisano in heat two. “I was being pushed from behind on the rolling-up lap,” Jordon explained, “and I was putting my hand up to say slow down, because if I’d have braked it would have caused a concertina effect. The stewards who gave me the penalty didn’t even watch the video footage of the start, and my team manager said to them ‘okay, if that’s what you want then next time we will brake and that will cause the biggest pile-up you’ve ever seen’. What made it even worse was that Maisano still ended up in front of me at the first corner... It was frustrating, because I had really wanted to have zero points next to my name.” It did indeed seem to be a somewhat disproportionate punishment for an incident in which the Kimbolton Road ace was blameless, but the fact that he still wound up on pole position for the first of the two all-important finals only served to underline his superiority. And then disaster struck... “Everything was going really well,” he recounted. “I had Lock behind me and I knew he was fast, so I thought he’d be able to hold onto me, but I made a gap at the start and by the third lap I had opened up a fair lead over him. As soon as I got comfortable there I concentrated on saving my tyres and winding the carb out so that it was nice and rich. I wasn’t having to push at all and was just maintaining my advantage, but equally I knew that if I needed to make a bigger gap I had the pace there. “I was comfortable setting consistently quick lap times and in a sweet spot with the kart. Then going through the chicane on lap nine I jumped over a kerb, and as the kart landed again I think one of the connections must have been a bit iffy because the wiring loom failed; I went straight to the carb to try to fix it by hand, but obviously that wasn’t the problem and I had to pull off by the side of the track. It was so frustrating – I just stood there and stamped my feet in fury!” From a position of dominance, Jordon suddenly found himself under what he described as ‘big-time’ pressure, as he faced beginning the crucial second final from right down towards the back of the 34-strong grid in 29th place. Needing a top ten finish to be sure of making it through to the main championship showdown, the Palmer Sport employee was only-too aware that even the slightest minor issue – spin, accident, clipped kerb or mechanical problem – would spell the end of his hopes. “I always like starting from the back because it can be fun,” he confessed, “but this time I was wary of getting caught up in a crash being right in the pack. I just had to concentrate on trying to find the gaps and working my way through the traffic. I got a knock from behind at the first corner which sent me right across the grass, but luckily that meant I just missed a collision ahead and came back onto the track in about 20th place. “There was another crash in front of me in the second corner which I also managed to avoid, and then I just kept pushing and pushing and pulling off some late lunges and managed to get up to third. After that I was really trying hard to catch Ben Cooper and David Da Luz, because I thought on the last lap they might start scrapping over the lead which could give me a chance, but I was just too far behind. “Afterwards everybody in the team was coming up to me to shake my hand and saying ‘how the hell did you do that?’ I felt quite pleased with the way I had driven, but I was so disappointed that I didn’t get to stand up on the podium because they worked it out on the aggregate results rather than on the basis of the second final.” Be that as it may, he will have a second opportunity to make amends at Essay in early August, when the leading 24 contenders from each of the three regional qualification rounds unite to battle it out for the title of 2009 KF2 European Champion – one of the most prestigious and coveted trophies of the season. Similarly in France, Essay is practically the polar opposite of Angerville in terms of track layout – meaning that drivers’ skills will be staunchly tested at both ends of the spectrum. Having survived a punishing qualifying meeting that resulted in high-profile casualties of the likes of Maisano, Goff, Alarcón and highly-rated compatriot Mackenzie Taylor, Jordon now has his sights set fully on claiming the ultimate crown. “I did the European qualifiers there a few years ago and wound up in the top five overall, and that was my first time out in KF3 so I was still having to get used to everything,” the former John Bunyan School pupil concluded. “It’s a good track – quite fast and flowing with some nice corners and plenty of overtaking places. “I’m pretty confident we can repeat this kind of performance there. The Italian contingent will all be there too, so that will make things harder, but I think we can do well. If the equipment is on-form, then I will be too.” The Italians have been warned. All pics courtesy of Chris Walker/www.kartpix.net.
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Jordon
Lennox-Lamb was cruising to victory in the prestigious annual
Bridgestone Cup in Italy when an engine failure dashed his dream and
left him to return home empty-handed – but his scintillating form has
nonetheless left him brimful of confidence for the final international
meeting of his 2009 karting campaign next month. 
Young
Bedford kart driver Jordon Lennox-Lamb had to battle hard to secure his
first podium finish in six races when the British Super 1 Series
travelled to Whilton Mill – but having finally got his faltering title
bid back on-track, he is hopeful now of more rostrum finishes to come
before season’s end. 
I