STUTELEY
SIGNS UP FOR TITLE BID
25 January,
2008: British Formula Ford Championship race winner Linton
Stuteley is among the first names to have registered with the
series for the coming season.
The
Hertfordshire-based 22-year-old will return to the Ford-backed
championship for a third full season, once again at the wheel of
the Getem Racing-prepared '06 Mygale which he drove to fourth
place overall in 2007.
Linton believes he
has a good chance of adding to the summer win he scored last
season at Snetterton: "It's not going to be like last year
with one or two drivers dominating, and that gives me the
opportunity to go in there and hopefully nail it from the start.
"My car was
competitive last year and I've done a lot of work over the winter
to improve my skills. I'm feeling confident but I'm not
underestimating the level of opposition: the Jamun team is bound
to be strong and Westley Barber is a top driver, though his car is
an unknown quantity."
Stuteley, who won
the Avon Clubmans Formula Ford title in 2005, hopes to have a
quick team-mate in an identical car alongside him at Getem. He
retains the backing of sponsors Big Cold Turkey, ST Construction,
Redline Oil and Powerpill.
British Formula
Ford co-ordinator Penny Mattocks reports that the grid is filling
fast: "We await the paperwork from the big teams; they are
all expecting to field multi-car entries so it looks as though we
shall have a nearly full complement at most rounds. We are hoping
that drivers won't leave it too late, as advance payment entries
are being taken on a first-come/first-served basis and we will not
be allowing reserves at any of our meetings -including Knockhill,
where we can start only 28 cars."
The other early
registrations for 2008 are:
25-year-old Westley
Barber, the 2002 champion, who will return
at the wheel of a new Comtec chassis
Chrissy Palmer, 17, runner-up in last year's 750 Motor Club
SaxMax saloon championship, will race a Sterling
Motorsports-prepared Ray
The 2007 British Formula Ford Scholarship Champion,
Matt Dobson,
and his prize Van Diemen
Nineteen-year-old Anglesey-based
Alex Jones, who will race a
Myerscough College-prepared '07 Van Diemen
Daniel Walker, the novice son of truck racing legend Richard
Walker. The 22-year-old will race an'06 Mygale for the new
SlideSports team
Van Diemen driver Matthew
Payne, who switches to the PJM Racing
team for '08
Former Ginetta sports car racers
Felix Scott, 23, who will drive
a Spirit, and 18-year-old Kieran Vernon
Garry Findlay, who has the advantage of a 2007 Mygale for his
championship bid. It's the Suffolk-based 18-year-old's third
season of British Formula Ford
This 25-race
championship gets underway in two months, at Oulton Park on Easter
Monday. British Formula Ford is alongside British F3 at all its UK
dates, and also supports A1GP at Brands Hatch, British GTs at
Knockhill and will have a meeting at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. |
