Fareham’s James Wren entered his first race of the new Formula Ford 1600 season full of optimism on Easter Monday, but saw his hopes of points cruelly vanish when he was rammed off the road on the second lap at Castle Combe.

The 2001 season will be Wren’s second crack at the fearsomely competitive Castle Combe Formula Ford 1600 Championship. He finished 11th in the standings, out of over 50 competitors, in his first full year in 2000 and was hoping for even better from his sophomore year.

An excellent pre-race test gave him plenty of reason to be confident, but James was baffled when he ended qualifying only 18th on the grid in his Fareham Van Hire-backed Van Diemen.

“I don’t understand why I’m so slow,” he said. “The times we did in testing would have been good enough for sixth on the grid, and it didn’t feel like I was doing anything different this morning. I got a clear lap, nothing went wrong, but I’m down at the back. It feels like the start of last year all over again.”

The race got off to a promising start however, as Wren shot up four places to run 14th after the first corner. Then things began to go wrong…

“Into the Esses I had to go wide to give another guy room, he made a do-or-die move and I thought ‘it’s only 15th place, it’s hardly worth crashing over.’ That let Richard Lay get past me too,” James explained. "I was much quicker than Lay and into Tower on the next lap he braked so early I had to swerve to the outside to avoid going straight into the back of him. He was braking miles before the corner, so much so that I was right alongside him at the apex. Then he just looked across, saw where I was and veered across the road at me. He put me straight into the barriers, head-on."

“It’s hard for a racing driver at a time like this. The adrenaline’s still flowing but you’re looking at a car that’s going to take a lot of time, money and effort to fix. All because of the poor driving standards of your rivals. It’s lucky he didn’t go off too because I’ve had plenty of time to calm down now, whereas straight afterwards I don’t think I would have had the self-control to stop myself going to find him and doing something I might later regret.”

It was a sad and unfair way for James to see his hopes dashed. Although Formula Ford racing is known for being occasionally too close for comfort, this was the first time in his car racing career that Wren had fallen victim to such an incident. At least he can take comfort from the fact that he was utterly blameless and bounce back even more determined at his next race.