“Just throw it into the corner, and sort out whatever happens afterwards!”

I’ve done 3 championship race weekends (plus one non-championship festival) on a very tight budget, proved I can actually drive a proper Formula Vee race car, and realised my childhood dream!

2015 has been a pretty good year in terms of my personal development.

I’ve had huge help from Glenn Hay who’s basically carried me along the way, but have also overcome my own fears, doubts and lack of skill along the way!

Since coming to my epiphany of how to drive a Formula Vee quickly at Silverstone in my first race (hence the title, “Just throw it into the corner, and sort out whatever happens afterwards!”), I’ve realised it fits quite well with my attitude on life.

Take that gamble.  Get off your ass and DO IT – and then deal with the consequences be they good or bad.

If you’re not pushing forwards into the unknown, well, you’ll never know what might have been possible for you.

I’m looking forward (bit of an understatement!!) to driving for Glenn next season, but am also acutely aware that I can’t really do this forever.

I still believe that it IS possible to do a season in Formula Vee for £2000, but I’m not sure it’s sustainable.

In my current job, that’s about all that I could spend.  One big crash and that could easily wipe out my budget.  Without Glenn to help me, I don’t think I’d have any chance of carrying on.  Even if I keep improving and do everything right, realistically, I can’t afford this.

The obvious next step is to find some sponsorship.

I have a lot of ideas, but am also realistic in what I think it’s even possible to get from sponsors in this day and age, and in a race series that’s far from the BTCC or F1.

I may reveal my methods if they yield some success, but for the obvious reasons of competition, this may be the one thing that I won’t be very open about on my blog.

If you read this and would like to help me or the team out in any way at all, from fees, parts, to just getting your hands on at race weekends, then please get in touch!

For 2016 Glenn will be stripping the excellent engine in the Sheane, remounting the front shocks, and then working at getting the Ray and his championship winning Scarab back together, too.

Why?

Because 2017 will be the 50th anniversary of Formula Vee in the UK!  We aim to have as many cars out as we can, and it should all be a huge year for Formula Vee, and for British racing!

My aim for 2016 will be more of the same. A steady improvement, and moving up the grid. I’ve proved that I can be quick even with a damaged car and injury, and I was still able to drive around these problems and get, for a total rookie, some pretty fine results!

I’ll be aiming to finish in the top 6 – especially on the tracks I’ve already been to. If I can afford to test before the races I’ll take full advantage so that I can hit the ground running. If I knock out my mistakes I can do well – if I can grab the car by the scruff of its neck and get confident with it at the limit, I can maybe surprise a few of the front runners!

I’ve had some support from JooVuu.com, and hopefully I’ll also be using one of their brand new JooVuu-X cameras. I’ve had a sneak peak of the prototype that arrived just too late for me to use at Brands, and it’s a proper quality bit of kit with loads of amazing features, and it should be huge for them. I’ll also be running multiple cameras where I can to capture all the track action!

Glenn is modifying the front shock positions, so that should also take care of anything I bent getting airborne at Donington, and then the car should be good to go.

Before that, the Vee Centre are holding their annual awards night this Saturday, with a lot of the drivers doing a bit of karting before! I’ll take a helmet camera for that, but with skinny kart experts out there I don’t expect to be winning anything there.

It should be fun, though!