Formula BMW
UK: James Wingfield Knockhill summary
Weekend Diary and Race Report 27-28 August 2005, Knockhill -- James Wingfield's third meeting in a Formula BMW was in Scotland and it was another new circuit to learn in extreme weather conditions that were quite extraordinary. He was hoping for a ...
Edited: Dec 16, 2005, 10:59 PM
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Weekend Diary and Race Report
27-28 August 2005, Knockhill -- James Wingfield's third meeting in a Formula BMW was in Scotland and it was another new circuit to learn in extreme weather conditions that were quite extraordinary. He was hoping for a good result to go alongside Kwikpower's successful public launch of KP Renewables in the UK.
The weekend started well with the Kwikpower Motaworld BMW car behaving itself while James gained experience on the steep gradients and vicious kerbs that form the tough Knockhill circuit. Despite still learning the track, James still managed to close the gap to the front runners and ended up just 0.6 seconds off of the pole position for race two. The racing promised to be very close with only 1.1 seconds covering the entire twenty three car grid.
The weather took a turn for the worse on race-day with the air temperature down to around 8 degrees and rain blasting horizontally through the paddock. Nevertheless James' start for race 1 went really well and after gaining four places on lap one, he was homing in on more of the top drivers including the championship leader, Sam Bird. A few overtaking manoeuvres later and having nipped past two drivers at once out of Clark corner, James was chasing Sam down for 9th position when the engine water temperature started to rise. James was forced to back off his pace to cool the engine but it meant giving up some hard earned places in the process. With all the short shifting and added distraction of the water temperature alarm, James missed his breaking point and spun at turn 3. Unfortunately, another car collided with him mid spin and the resulting damage forced him into retirement. The Motaworld team managed to repair the car and get him back out on the grid for race two but water had penetrated the electrics such that the engine suffered with a severe loss of power and the dash stopped working altogether! This forced James to return to the pits after just a few laps to retire with another DNF.
Having closed the gap to the leaders to barely more than half a second, and broken into the top ten for the first time, to come away with two DNF's seemed harsh. In the end it was just one of those weekends, leaving everyone thinking what if.... Fortunately, Silverstone is only three weeks away on the 17th and 18th of September so there's just time to go home, dry out and come back ready to pick up where we all left off.
-Paul Wingfield
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