TARPORLEY, England – The UK’s Avon Tyres National Formula Ford 1600 Championship gets underway on April 9 in the rolling countryside of rural Cheshire at the Oulton Park circuit.
A top-quality entry will be contesting the first two rounds of the series and, as this season the category has become a feeder series for the Mazda Road to Indy Shootout, all those on the grid will be gunning to win the title and book their place at the shootout which will be staged at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on the weekend of December 6/7. The winner will earn a US$200,000 Mazda scholarship to contest the 2017 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda.
Last year’s champion, Jonny McMullan, has made a last-minute deal to take part at Oulton Park in one of Oldfield Motorsport’s brand new Van Diemens. He hopes to find the budget to complete the whole series with the team that took Stuart Gough to the title in 2014 because he has been trying to get a foothold in America’s motorsport scene for some time.
McMullan is used to winning scholarship prizes. Having been crowned Ireland’s 2014 Young Driver of the Year, he drove majestically to the UK’s National Formula Ford 1600 title last year in the Motorsport Ireland Van Diemen LA10. His successor to both the accolade and seat is Jake Byrne.
Another driver with an impressive cv is James Raven who returns for another shot at the championship that he so narrowly missed in 2014 when suspension failure cruelly robbed him at Oulton Park. Having bounced back from that disappointment in the best possible way by winning the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch that year, he will be leading the Cliff Dempsey Racing team in a Ray GR15/16. His teammate is Texan Chase Owen – the Skip Barber Racing School graduate is racing in the UK for the first time.
Tom McArthur, who was fastest behind the wheel of the B-M Racing Van Diemen LA10 at Silverstone during testing on Good Friday, is expected to be in the thick of the action.
Last year Matt Cowley won multiple titles in the Pre-‘90 Class for older cars but this season he is stepping up to the main category in the Van Diemen JL13 that Graham Carroll took to victory in the 2015 Walter Hayes Trophy. Having started as a rookie, Cowley’s past two years in Formula Ford 1600 have seen him getting faster and faster. Once familiar with his new car, he is bound to be a contender.
Due to circuit maintenance the races will be run on the shorter Island configuration of Oulton Park which includes a very tight hairpin. Many demon out-braking maneuvers are expected to take place there and should produce a magnificent start to the season.