Wayne Boyd future F1 driver

[Steven Roy]

I spent yesterday watching marshalls pulling a quite enormous number of cars out of tyre barriers and gravel traps at Knockhill yesterday.  Knockhill is famous for its ability to produce cold temperatures, high winds and copious amounts of rain, hail and snow on any day of the year that someone puts a racing car on the track.  It can do this while you can see 360 degrees of sunshine around it.  Yesterday for the first time ever it did a nice little Spa impression with a part dry part wet track in the middle of a Formula Ford race.

The track is two straights with a near hairpin at one end and a whole load of blind turns at the other.  Of course the straights stayed dry and it rained on the squiggly bits.

The highlight of the day was a 17 year old from Northern Ireland called Wayne Boyd in a dayglo version of Eddie Irvine's helmet.  The circuit commentator mentioned that he had watched him on his warm up lap the day before and he had spun the rear wheels most of the way round the track while chucking the car from lock to lock.  It was incredible to watch.  Once the race got under way he was quickly in the lead and probably would have driven into the distance had it not been for the odd magnetic fields around Knockhill yesterday which caused cars to become attracted to each other and the scenery.  Two cars crashed and an oil line became detatched spraying oil on the very wet squiggly bits.  Needless to say the first man through was the race leader who ended up in third as the safety car was deployed.

After the mess was cleared up the new race leader disappeared on the first lap and soon ater Boyd passed to take the lead again.  He was having some kind of problem carrying speed through the hairpin so he adopted the tactic Senna did against Prost of slowing right down in the hairpin knowing that he would be on the accelerator before his opponent and therefore faster up the long straight.  He did this for two or three laps until he had a gap and then drove away from him.

A 17 year old with great natural car control is one thing but a 17 year old who can deal calmly with adversity and think tacticly at the same time and beat someone in an identical car is a bit better.  Luck plays a big part in who gets to the top in racing but this kid looks a bit special.

[Alianora La Canta]

I see what you mean, Steven. Watch out world, here comes Wayne!

[Wizzo]

Excellent first hand post 

[Steven Roy]

I decided to check up and see if I was right about this driver or whether his drive had been a fluke or I had totally mis-interpreted what I had seen.  To put his performance in perspective he is in a four car team with three older team mates in equal equipment.  There have been nine races so far and his record stands at 8 wins, 8 fastest laps and 9 poles.  He doesn't appear on the results for the race he did not win so I assume he had a DNF.

I think he may be a bit special.

[Alianora La Canta]

Wow 

[Steven Roy]

There were another two FFord races at Brands Hatch.  The results for Wayne were two wins, two fastest laps but only one pole.

[John S]

Lets just hope it's not J J Lehto syndrome, ie. can storm through one series like a knife through butter but finds transferring that performance to another series a bit problematic.

Damm good results so far though!

[Steven Roy]

Some of you may remember early in the season that I spotted Wayne Boyd as being a bit special.  His season didn't end with the same stellar performances as it started and Van Diemen finally sorted their car out enough to take the odd win.  He did however do enough to comfortably win the championship.

The points system rewards consistency more than performance so the points gap is not as big as it should be.  The winning driver gets 30 points while the guy in 5th gets 20 so winning the championship by 50 points really is more impressive than it appears.  By my count he won 13 of 25 races with the other wins split between 7 drivers.  http://www.britishformulaford.co.uk/08points.htm

According to his teams website his record is 12 poles, 13 wins and 13 fastest laps.  His team mates including the reigning Australian FFord champion won 3 races between them.  Interestingly he won 13 races but only finished second 3 times and never finished 3rd.  So if the car was good and he didn't get caught up in the usual FFord wrestling he won.

Hopefully we can look forward to him racing Formula Renault or something similar next season.