Gutsy Hawksworth races to podium flourish against the odds

Jack Hawksworth had to dig deep in his latest karting appearance – the final meeting on the prestigious 2008 CIK-FIA European Championship calendar – but his efforts would prove to be more than worthwhile, as he ended the campaign with a rostrum flourish.

The young Bradford ace entered the weekend with the clear intention of taking away from it the maximum points possible, having displayed breathtaking pace and racecraft throughout the year, only to be hampered by ill-fortune and over-zealous driving on the part of some of his rivals. As the only Brit in a fiercely-competitive, 104-strong KZ2 field, though, he has undoubtedly been making his mark.

“I was aiming to hopefully win both finals and finish third in the championship,” Jack explained of his ambitions for Varennes in mid-France. “I knew from the previous round of the WSK International Series that we had been quickest in KZ2, so being realistic that was definitely possible. We had done two days’ testing at Varennes ahead of the weekend, and we had been competitive compared to our rivals.

“It’s a really quick circuit, with quite a lot of fast, sweeping bends, so I enjoyed driving it and practice went ok. In the rain the kart felt quite good, but in the dry we didn’t quite have the set-up right and were only about sixth or seventh-fastest.”

It was solid start, but one that would swiftly be curtailed by a qualifying session that, in Jack’s own words, was ‘a disaster’. On a slippery surface on which he found himself scrabbling around for grip, the 17-year-old wound up just 28th on the timesheets, half a second shy of the leading pace – and with much work to do.

“It was dry again and we went the wrong way on set-up,” he candidly admitted. “The kart was sliding around a lot at the back and wasn’t gripping the road right going through the corners. It was just ridiculous; it didn’t feel good at all.

“When you qualify 28th in the European Championship it’s always going to be tough. It means having to start towards the back, and it’s not easy to overtake when you’re up against those guys. Luckily you don’t get any points for the heats, though, and I was still aiming to go out and win the finals.”

Indeed, spurred on by his qualifying disappointment, a raft of set-up changes allowed Jack to impressively fight his way through from his 12th grid slot to two third places and a fifth in three of his heat races – lapping amongst the three fastest drivers on the track on each occasion – and he was up into an encouraging fourth position in his last heat after just three laps when his water pump broke…

“That was really annoying,” he acknowledged, “because we were very quick in the wet, had come back from a bad qualifying and knew we had put all that hard work in, and now we would have to come back through all over again. It was frustrating, but you just have to get on with it, don’t you, and we had a lot of confidence because we knew by then we were fast in the dry too.”

That left the PDB Racing star to begin the first of the weekend’s two finals from 11th on the grid and, despite suffering from a slight lack of power – a particular disadvantage at Varennes given the circuit’s long straights – he produced what was indisputably the drive of the race to battle his way up the order and snare the final podium position.

“I thought I might as well just go for it,” Jack related, “and I went around the outside of the first corner – which is a tight hairpin – to make up two or three places at the start. We were having some problems with the engine, but the chassis felt perfect – really, really good – and I was able to slice my way through the next five or six drivers over the next five laps.

“We were just coming through so quickly and I was up to third in no time, but because we didn’t have quite the same amount of engine power we would normally have had it took some time to catch Tony Lavanant. I had closed onto his rear bumper by the last lap, so if the engine had been ok, for sure we would have won the race I think. Still, to get a podium from 11th on the grid was a pretty nice result.”

It was indeed, and having taken the chequered flag a scant 1.7 seconds behind race-winner Kevin Jansen – and with a quicker fastest lap than the two ahead of him to boot – all was looking good for an even better outcome to the second final. With starting positions determined by the finishing order of race one, hopes were high – at least until the third lap…

“I knew we had the pace,” Jack asserted, “and all year we’ve been the fastest people off the start-line, so I knew if I could get a decent start I would be in with a really good chance. Lavanant got into the lead from P2 ahead of Jansen, and I just tucked in behind in third, but I knew I had to get past Jansen quickly so Lavanant wouldn’t get away.

“I managed to squeeze past Jansen into the first corner, and though Lavanant had quite a good lead at one point, we were really quick and closed him down by two tenths of a second a lap over the first three laps. I managed to get onto his bumper and out-braked him into the last corner, but he then just ran into the back of me and pushed me off.

“I spun off and stalled, which meant I had to get out of the kart and push it to re-start the engine again, leaving me dead last in 34th place and at least 100 yards behind the back of the pack. I was really annoyed, but I just got back on and went for it.

“It was the last race of the season and there was no point in giving up, so I just wanted to try and make up as many positions as I could. I must have overtaken at least two people every lap; I made some good moves and was told I had put on a good show coming back through the order.

“There was a lot of anger afterwards, though, because I’m convinced we would have won the race if we hadn’t been pushed off the circuit. There were a lot of arguments in parc ferme between my team and his, but you just have to accept it, don’t you? There was nothing really to say. At the end of the day you’ve just got to take it on the chin.”

Taking the chequered flag 16th – just one place out of the points, adding further insult to injury, and again with the third-quickest lap to his name, two hundredths of a second off that of race-winner Lavanant despite having spent most of his time battling his way through traffic – was a cruel end to what has by all accounts been a hugely impressive season.

Eventually winding up seventh in the standings, Jack was left to rue the points that went begging with his ten-second jump-start penalty at Angerville – robbing him of an utterly dominant victory – the subsequent knock-on effect of having to begin the second race there from so much further down the grid, being unceremoniously removed from the action by Lavanant’s Energy Corse team-mate Mathias Gallepe at Mariembourg and now his Varennes misfortune – points that cost him, he is adamant, the KZ2 European Championship crown.

“If you look at the points we should have had throughout the year, we would have won the championship by quite a long way,” the 2007 British ICC Vice-Champion, 2006 Junior Max European Champion and Junior Max Vice-World Champion insisted. “Overall I think we’ve fared well, though.

“We’ve been quickest in KZ2 all year, but we’ve been taken off by the Energy team twice. I think they saw me as their biggest competitor, and Lavanant hasn’t overtaken me all year. At Varennes he had just won the title in the first final, so I think he thought he would have looked a bit stupid if he then got beaten in the second final by a driver who had finished seventh in the championship…

“We’ve got one WSK round left now, at Zuera in Spain, and hopefully we can get a couple of top three finishes at it. We know the pace is there; we’ve known that since Mariembourg. We’ve had the pace to finish inside the top five all year; we’ve just had a few things go wrong. If we can get past that, we can definitely finish inside the top three.

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