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BFF: Nathan Freke Oulton Park race one notes

Nathan Freke Bounces Back. Qualifying Kidderminster racing driver Nathan Freke bounced back in qualifying for the first round of the new National Formula Ford Duratec Championship. Following his horrific accident in Thursday testing and a drive ...

Edited: Jul 2, 2009, 5:53 PM

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Nathan Freke Bounces Back.

Qualifying

Kidderminster racing driver Nathan Freke bounced back in qualifying for the first round of the new National Formula Ford Duratec Championship. Following his horrific accident in Thursday testing and a drive shaft failure in Friday testing, qualifying would be an unknown quantity as there had not been an opportunity to test on new tyres, and how would the driver react after such a large impact 2 days earlier? Holding 4th for most of the session Nathan put in 2 flying laps on the trot to grab P2 for each of the weekends 2 races - no worries commented Nathan, the car just took a while to come on. Need to make some minor adjustments for the race.

Race 1

Nathan takes his place on the grid hoping for a good start. The lights come on and then go out, Nathan gets an excellent start and is into the first corner 1st, demoting the pole sitter to 2nd. Nathan holds the lead under enormous pressure for 2 laps, when suddenly there is no following car, the 2nd and 3rd place drivers are demoted to 4th and 5th after contact. This leaves Nathan with a 3 second lead, but unable to draw away any further as his lap times are suspiciously slow as the race progresses. During the next 10 laps the polemans car starts to eat into Nathan's lead until it is down to 1.7 seconds on the last but one lap, when a brake lockup on Nathan's Mygale lets the following car onto his tail, and into the lead at the start of the last lap. Despite attacking hard in the final lap and crossing the line next to the other car the timing system shows that Nathan has finished 2nd by 3/100ths of a second. A good result in his first ever National car race and his first front row start in car racing.

"I didn't have the grip I needed," said Nathan. "I could see him catching me and then I locked a wheel going into the chicane, and that allowed him to get on to my tail. We will have to work hard to get it right for Monday, but it is a good solid start considering our lack of testing here"

Nathan will be on track at 11.30 on Easter Monday.

-www.nathan-freke.co.uk

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