Fareham’s James Wren moved closer to a top ten placing in his second Formula Ford race of the season at Castle Combe on Saturday. The Dalmeny Racing driver recovered from brake problems in qualifying to charge through to 15th in the race.

Wren has spent most of the 1999 season rebuilding his Van Diemen to original specification, returning to competition only two races ago. The inexperienced driver has been getting quicker and quicker since making his comeback, and after a promising test session was expecting to go well in qualifying.

He was disappointed, therefore, to be 21st on the 30 car grid. Initially James blamed himself for his car’s lack of pace, but later discovered that brake problems had also played a part.

The race went much better. In the last round, James had been running at a conservative pace to see how his newly rebuilt car performed. This time, he was able to go flat-out from the start, although from row twelve on the grid it was going to be tough to score any points.

Avoiding the traditional first-lap accidents, Wren was soon making progress up the leaderboard. By lap four he had caught and passed Mary Elliott for 17th, and was able to slip through the traffic with apparent ease.

He took 15th place from Mike Lynch on lap eight, but ran out of time and made no further progress. Although 15th in the overall results, James was actually 11th in his class.

“That was a fantastic race,” he enthused, “we really showed the potential of the car. If we could have qualified higher, we could have really made something of that race. I was with other cars all the time, but I was so much faster than all of them.”

Wren’s race had ended in a spectacular sideways slide out of the final corner and over the finish line. Was that a mistake or a deliberate piece of showmanship?

“That’s my style, flat-out from start to finish,” he explained. “You have to push all the time because you never know what might be happening in front of you. Actually though, I did think I might have lost it there…”

“This is just the start. The work on the car is pretty much finished but there’s a lot more to come from me. I know where I’m losing time to the others and what I can do about it. I want to be up there with the top class A cars, then I can think about scoring points.”