Luke Wright proved to be one of the stars of the Formula Renault Winter Cup, scoring two podium positions and marking himself out as one of the leading category rookies.
The 18-year-old from Dorset finished equal seventh in the championship, which was his first taste of the new-specification Formula Renault after competing in the old-spec BARC Championship car during the 2010 season.
Not only did he have a new car to get to grips with, but Wright was competing against a 25-car field of illustrious up-and-coming talent. These included: three drivers who have raced the new-spec car all season in the UK championship, two of whom had won races; two Red Bull ‘Junior’ drivers; international talent connected to the Renault F1 team and mentored by former World Champions; and the son of 1996 World Champion Damon Hill! To make it even more of a challenge, Wright was going up against this opposition, some of whom were part of four-car ‘superteams’, as the solo driver in a brand-new team, MGR Motorsport.
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"I went from 12th to second so that was pretty good" |
On his debut in the new-spec Formula Renault, which also represented MGR’s first-ever race weekend, Wright took a fifth place and then a second at the Snetterton double-header – just half a second behind the race winner. “I went from 12th to second so that was pretty good,” he said. “I could have tried a big lunge to take the win and I did my best to get by cleanly, but there was no way through. It’s a shame, because I got out a little late in qualifying and I only had time for one fast lap, which meant my grid position for that race wasn’t so good. In testing there I’d been consistently second or third fastest.”
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The Winter Cup then concluded with four races at Pembrey in Wales, preceded by three days of testing for all the teams. On both of the first two days, Luke had problems which precluded him from running for the rest of the day, losing him valuable set-up time. “Most of the teams had been there the week before as well,” he said, “and I’d never been there at all…”
Wright’s bid for another podium was stalled in the first race when he was forced onto the grass and into an accident while he was running in the top three. But he put that right later on when he moved up from sixth on the grid to finish third. The last two races brought disappointing 10th-place finishes, the first “when someone drove over the top of me”, and the second when Luke found himself on the wrong tyres for the damp conditions, and was left to slither around on slicks.
Wright summed up: “I’m pretty happy with how the Winter Cup went, especially as we did better than most of the rookies and better than anyone else from the BARC Formula Renault Championship that I raced in this year. Snetterton went well, but Pembrey was difficult at first – it’s hard when you go to a new track, you’ve got no team-mates to compare data with, and it’s a brand-new team. For us it was just like racing was in the olden days!
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"It was great to get two podiums and now I'm looking forward to doing some more testing with MGR Motorsport to prepare for 2011." |
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