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Walker does the double at Larkhall

Jonathan Walker completed his second double podium of the season and moved into 2nd place in the British Super 1 Championship at Larkhall in Lanarkshire, last Sunday (17 August).

Walker’s 2nd and 3rd places were also the perfect present to himself, as he celebrated his 20th birthday on race day.

However, he faced a stern challenge after Timed Qualifying - “I was quickest in the warm-up, but could only go 6th quickest in Qualifying,” Jonathan said.

With the rapidly changing weather playing havoc with the teams’ kart set-ups, Jonny found that it had wrong-footed his choices during the first heat. “It would rain really heavily, stop, and then the track would dry very quickly. But how long it would rain for, you just couldn’t tell. We went with the wrong tyre pressures and I couldn’t find the right level of grip, which meant I dropped back a couple of places”.

His fortunes began to improve when the AMT driver took 5th in the second heat. “It had stopped raining again and the track was drying, so I was on slicks. This made over-taking quite challenging because to make a pass, you had to come off the dry racing line and go onto the damp, greasy parts of the track – which made heavy braking quite lairy.”

Having qualified 9th overall for the first final, Jonathan started from the 5th row of the grid and describes the start-line action, “Larkhall’s one of the shorter, tighter and twistier circuits on the calendar and there are always crashes there. Just after the start, it’s important to avoid the incidents, let the race settle and then move forward. Which is exactly what I did. I picked my way, one by one, and got into second place. At this point, the leader - Mark Litchfield – had established a three second lead, but I began to take big chunks out of it and managed to peg it to just over a second at the finish.”

Although he was delighted to take a trophy and a good haul of points, Jonny knew that his second-place meant that he would start the day’s next final on the still damp outside line. “The first corner at Larkhall is a quick, left-hander. You need to get over to the left as quickly as possible because if you don’t, you’ll be hung out to dry on the dirty part of the track.”

Which is exactly what happened. “Mark got a good start but I couldn’t tuck in behind him because his team-mate, Chris Rogers, was already there! I was pushed wide and got beaten up a little, but fought my way back and eventually got into 3rd.”

On the penultimate lap, Walker posted the fastest lap but was unable to finish further up the order. “I think I could’ve been 2nd had the race been two laps longer,” he mused. “Still I took home good points and I’m second in the standings now. There are four races left and I think I can catch (Championship leader) Mark. It’s going to be interesting. He’s good at the start of races and I’m good at the end, so we’ll just have to see…”

Published: 2008-08-21 00:00:00

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