Bryony King recently had the latest rounds in the Formula Jedi Championship at Silverstone on the National circuit.
She arrived on Friday for testing and within a couple of laps she was fully up to speed. She was swapping fastest lap times with her rivals all through the first session and she was feeling very confident in the car so she used the second session to scrub in some tyres ready for qualifying.
The rest of the race meeting, for the Jedi championship at least, would take place on Sunday.
Things got off to a very positive start in qualifying when Bryony took fifth place on her first run, only a few tenths off pole. Shee hoped to move up the grid even further on her next run only to meet traffic but with half the session still to go there was plenty of time to get a time good enough for pole! Sadly for Bryony, her engine then decided that it had enough and it failed. Despite then missing the rest of the session, Bryony still took eighth on the grid, just eight tenths of a second off pole position so things still looked good for the race. Except that the team now just had two and a half hours to repair the car and try and get it ready for race one. The car and engine was dismantled and various problems were found. What would normally be many hours work was completed in an incredibly short time!
The team just made it in time although they missed the deadline for joining the grid and so instead of her hard earned eighth place, Bryony would start from the pitlane.
Bryony shot out the pit lane as soon as she was released and went flat out to try and chase down the pack and things initially looked good but going into turn one, the engine cut out. Bryony was out of the race, much to Bryony and the team’s frustration. All their hard work had been for nothing. Now they would have to try and do it all again for race two.
Sadly when the car was retrieved to the pits after the race, it became clear that they would not be able to fix it for race two and Bryony was out of the weekend having barely been able to race through no fault of her own. It was incredibly frustrating given the pace that Bryony had shown in the Friday test sessions. But the car will be repaired for the next rounds at Rockingham where Bryony should hopefully be able to show her true pace. Bryony spoke about her difficult Silverstone weekend;
“Overall it was a very mixed weekend, with Friday being brilliant with my pace really showing to be competitive, and then for it all to go horrendously wrong on Sunday was just a massive shame. Really gutted, but really excited to get back out for round 3 at Rockingham. Massive thank you to everyone in Formula Jedi for working so hard to try and get my car ready, and to my Dad for his ongoing support.”
Bryony’s next rounds at Rockingham are on the 11th and 12th June. By Marc Waller
