After nearly two years away from racing, Fareham’s James Wren returned to action in the Castle Combe Formula Ford 1600 series on Saturday and showed no loss of speed despite his lengthy absence.

Backed by local company Prosig Limited, Wren’s last race had been in April 2001. Having competed two full seasons of Formula Ford in 1999 and in 2000 an accident at their last outing had forced a through rebuild of the car. “We’ve spent the time away working on the car, and refining how we go about motor racing,” James said.

Qualifying started with the usual Formula Ford action, several cars going off and an oil spill from a fellow competitor’s engine hardly helping matters, James qualified 20th in the 38 car field, an encouraging performance after so much time away.

“Everybody was struggling in qualifying, the field was very tight and there were so many cars on the track. It was a real shock when Pat Blakeney’s oil pump failed, I was following him through camp corner at the time, it was pretty hairy.”

Having opted for a soft car set up Wren was easing himself back into racing slowly. “We knew we be losing a little speed with that set up, but it was worth it to make the car more drivable.”

There was some concern when Wren pulled off the track just before the end of the qualifying session. “I was coming out of the second chicane when I lost drive,“ James recalled. After recovering the car to the pits an empty fuel tank was diagnosed. ”We knew we were running the fuel levels tight, but we weren’t expecting that.”

The Combe series is the most competitive regional Formula Ford championship in the country by a long way, James was going to find it hard to make progress in such a close field.

“I made a good start and gained a couple of places, but when I got to down to the first chicane it was chaos. There had been some oil spills there in the previous race and the marshals had laid cement to help soak it up. With people charging in three or four abreast the cement dust was flicked up and made a cloud over the whole chicane. I wanted to stay out of trouble, discretion was to be the better part of valor and I lifted, only to find that I was squeezed out and had to back right off, losing several places.”

Frustratingly the incident had dropped Wren back down to 26th place. He spent the remainder of the race fighting with the cars that had slipped past en route to a mildly frustrating 19th place finish.

“I know every racing driver says this, but I really could have gone quicker,” James said after the race.

“The plan for today was to go steady and see what we could get from the car,” Wren admitted. “We’ve seen that although the soft set up helped with feedback it did hinder us with some under steer. At least we know exactly what we’re working with. We can build up from here.”

Wren has again shown his ability to put in the fast laps and pass cars when the opportunity arises. More importantly, James had finished the race without any problems.