WATCH: Dempsey crashes at Formula Ford Festival

ROUNDUP: Mullingar driver disappointed with weekend at Brands Hatch, but still makes seventh in final

“At Brands, in the wet, we haven’t found the sweet spot in the car yet,” said Jordan Dempsey after what he described as a “disappointing” weekend at the 2020 Formula Ford Festival.

“I think if we’d had more running over the couple of test days, we would’ve been able to optimise it, but it wasn’t meant to be.”

The young Mullingar racer was a bit downhearted, but he can reflect on strong results, including seventh in the final, despite the setbacks he had to deal with, and he still has the Walter Hayes Trophy to compete for next weekend at Silverstone.

Jordan’s Brands Hatch outing began last Wednesday, a wet day, and he needed time to bed himself in again, as he hadn’t raced for a year.

“By the last session on Wednesday, we had reasonable pace in the wet, and then Thursday morning in the first session, it was dampish – the last corner, Clearways, was still wet, but the way into it was dry.

"I went in there one lap, got a bit of a slide on through the corner just before, Surtees, then went into Clearways and just caught the grass, and that was enough to put me straight into the wall.”

That damaged the car fairly badly, and while it was being repaired Jordan was missing valuable wet running track time.

“Dad (Morgan Dempsey, who was on mechanic duty for the weekend) and the rest of the team (Kevin Mills Racing) fixed the car, got it out and in the dry we were right on the pace.

“The next morning it was wet again, but I didn’t get a lap in because the engine had woken up with some mysterious misfire that it didn’t have the day before. While we got to the bottom of the misfire, that was another wet session I missed.

“So, we had the pace in the dry, and early in the week had the pace in the wet, but then everyone got the chance to develop their cars over the wet testing that I missed, so we were on the back foot with that.”

A highlight of Jordan’s weekend was pole position in qualifying, pace that marked him out as an event favourite, but he still wasn’t happy with the set-up in the wet.

He managed to finish second in his heat, and the following morning, as he started third in his semi-final, he tried a different set-up in the wet, but it made the car worse.

That meant he lined up ninth for the final. “In the assembly area, I was thinking ‘if I want to win this, I have to do something radical’, because everyone was so close. The sun was out and the track was drying, and looking at how the track behaved earlier in the week when the conditions were like that, it dried rapidly, so I put a dry set-up on, as I thought there would be a dry line. I had to try something, I had nothing to lose.”

The warm-up revealed that Jordan was on the wrong set-up, as the track was wet and when the sun dipped behind the tall buildings at Clearways, there was no chance it would dry out.

“It seemed like one of those weekends, whatever decision you make, it goes against you,” said Jordan.

Seventh in the final was a decent result, and Jordan and his Spectrum FF 1600 showed their pace in the dry. He says the car is always good around Silverstone, where he heads to race for the Walter Hayes Trophy, another Formula Ford event, as the current holder.

“I have better form at Silverstone than I do at Brands, so going in having won it last year, we’re hoping to do the same again.”

Jordan concluded saying: “Big thanks to all the sponsors who helped me get here, and hopefully I can do them proud next weekend.”

A number of local sponsors are supporting his efforts: SD Sealants, Allington Farmshop, Canore Hygiene Ltd, Hamills of Mullingar, Fixauto and Sleator Kia, and West End Motors Ltd.