Kent’s Esmee Hawkey returned to racing in the competitive W Series last weekend with a solid performance as she made her debut at Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli in Italy.
The Kent-based racer performed well despite taking a grid penalty for an incident in the previous race at Zolder in Belgium, making up several positions and finishing narrowly outside the point scoring places in 11th.

Under very different conditions to the cool and sometimes wet weather at the first two rounds of the season, Esmee and the other drivers were faced with the challenge of taking to the track under hot and sunny skies on both days.

Showing good speed in Friday’s practice sessions, the 21-year old matched her best qualifying performance of the season with the eighth quickest time but would have to line up 13th taking her penalty into account.

With a slow start, she dropped a few places before the race was quickly neutralised behind the Safety Car for a first lap incident, but once racing was back underway she made some good passes on a circuit where overtaking is difficult, finishing just outside of the top ten at the end of the contest.

There’s little time for Esmee to relax and recover, however, as she is in action once again this weekend in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB, the 485hp Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car a very different challenge to the 270hp Tatuus F3 T-318 used in the W Series.

“It was a good weekend. One positive was you get to keep your engineer and car if you have an incident, so I got to stick with both from the previous race and didn’t have to work to get to know someone new again.

“I was pretty happy with FP1 as I was sixth quickest but fell down the order a bit in FP2. I matched my best qualifying with eighth, though I am aiming to get in to the top five. Unfortunately, I had the five-place grid penalty from Zolder which made the race difficult. Coming in to the weekend I thought it was going to be an easy place to pass people, but I was very wrong. Because everyone’s pace was close it was really tough to make moves.

“The race was tough, but I knew it was going to be as the cars are very physical and we had the heat to deal with. I didn’t get the start to the race I would have liked. I made a few overtakes which I was happy with. It was physically and mentally challenging, but I was pleased to finish.

“The challenge this year will be jumping in and out of the Porsche and single-seater. I’m looking forward to getting back in the Carrera Cup car as I had a good test at Oulton Park recently, so the pace is there. Croft isn’t a circuit I’ve been to before so that’s another challenge and I will have to learn it quickly in practice. I’ve had a few podiums this season and am hoping for more success. I seem to be able to get to second, but I haven’t quite reached the top step yet.”