The Wera Alliance academy driver couldn’t have asked for a better start to his first car racing year, with a brace of podium finishes!
Silverstone was the stage for round 1 of the 8 round BRSCC Fiesta Junior Championship, and Alfie arrived along with Team mate Jenson Mason with 2 stunning Wera Academy cars, having shook the cars down in a couple of pre-season tests.
A dry Saturday saw Alfie qualify in an amazing 4th place, with a strong pace towards the end of the season netting him his fastest lap but in clean air and no tow.
Race 1 in the afternoon had Alfie line up on row 2 in his 4th place. The anticipation was high ahead of his first race. An average start saw the front 3 stretch their legs on Alfie but he held onto his 4th place. Over the next few laps Alfie gained momentum and put a challenge on for 3rd. A 3 car dice for the position then proceeded over a number of laps. Eventually after a hard but clean fight, Alfie came out on top and started to pull away, matching pace with 2nd place but unable to claw back the defect to mount a challenge, and crossed the line to get his debut podium in car racing.
The curtains opened Sunday morning for race 2 of the championship on to a very wet and gloomy race track. But a great opportunity for Alfie to experience some wet running. His main objective was to learn as much as he could over the race and to make it to the finish line. A great start from 3rd on the grid saw him challenge for 2nd at the first corner. A stop start race saw a safety car and eventually a red flag. Alfie remained in 3rd for the entire race but he was learning every lap and was on the bumper of 2nd in a tight 4 car bunch with 2 minutes to go ready to take the fight to them before a red flag ended the show.
Post-race scrutineering found the winner with a technical infringement which moved Alfie up into 2nd place.
Alfie said after the race – ‘it’s been a fantastic first race weekend, the team is going great at the minute they’ve built a pretty good race car haven’t they! Ash my mechanic has had late nights going over stuff checking bits, he’s really put in the effort, we’ve all put in the effort, so it’s nice to think with all the effort they have put in I can deliver some nice results for them.
It was the first time I had properly driven the car in the wet, so it nice to know we’ve got something to go off to Brands (round 2), so bring on Brands!!!
Pete Osborne of Alliance racing commented after the weekend – ‘What a debut! New car, new team, new driver and they went out there and smashed it. It’s an exciting start with Jenson Alfie’s team mate also performing well after reliability issues at the start of the weekend. We have got 2 young stars that are going to both be challenging for wins over the season and we can’t wait to see it’
Round 2 of the championship will be held at the Brands Hatch circuit near Maidstone on the 13th and 14th of April
