Fareham’s James Wren scorched through the field to take 15th place despite a troubled qualifying session in the second round of the Castle Combe Formula Ford 1600 Championship on Easter Monday.

Wren scored his first ever points in round one and expected to be in the top ten again in the latest round of the series. However, he was only able to qualify 23rd and seemed totally perplexed by his lack of pace.

"Nothing seems to be wrong with the car," he admitted. "It feels fine, so why am I so slow? We were going much quicker in testing and we haven’t altered anything since."

A problem with the rear brakes was later diagnosed, but with only one qualifying session James would be relying on trouble ahead in order to get into the points again. Although his chances of success may have all but evaporated, Wren was not going to give up and cruise through the race, as his scorching opening lap proved. After making his "best start ever" to move up to 18th by the first corner, James became embroiled in a dice with Rob Redcliffe, another regular frontrunner forced to fight through the backmarkers thanks to drama’s in qualifying.

"We were fighting with each other but at the same time we were having to dive past all the slower guys who we’d qualified behind," Wren recalled. "It was pretty hairy."

Redcliffe slipped ahead as they became caught up in the slower traffic, but by lap four James had still managed to claw his way up to 15th. Unfortunately by that time the frontrunners were long gone and the Fareham Van Hire-backed driver had to be content with chasing Redcliffe home. He closed the gap to his rival in the final laps but ran out of time to make any moves for position.

"If we’d been that quick in qualifying then we would have started about ten places further up," James admitted. "But that was quite an interesting race after all. We just lost too much time fighting with the slower cars, otherwise it was much better than this morning."

"We’re definitely moving in the right direction and making progress. I just need to work on qualifying so I don’t keep giving myself too much to do in the races."

That is easier said than done, for Wren’s tight budget means that he cannot afford to test as regularly as the frontrunners. Most of the top drivers spend a full day at the circuit practising immediately before the meeting, allowing them to fine tune their cars in advance, whereas James’ finances will not stretch that far, forcing him to rely on educated guesswork for a qualifying set-up. As his spectacular charges up the order in the first two races this year has proved, Wren lacks nothing in speed and aggression, he just needs more luck, experience and sponsorship