West Malling’s Jamie Bond got his VW Racing Cup campaign for 2018 underway last weekend at Silverstone – the home of motorsport.
Ahead of race one Jamie qualified in second place, giving him an excellent chance to attack race one for Rochester based Team Hard Racing.
Race one was a good race for Bond, having dropped back to third off the line, he had worked his way back up to second place by the end of the first lap. With three laps to go Bond had caught the leader and taken the lead of the race.
However, on the penultimate lap Denis Strandberg in his VW Scirocco moved past Bond on the straight and took the lead again, coming home in an impressive second place.
The second race of the weekend, Jamie started fifth on the grid due to the second race of the weekend being the traditional reverse grid race.
He was quick off the line in the VW Golf and was in third place by turn one and then in second place by turn two. He then went onto lea the race on lap two. On his way through the race he created a gap of 2.5 second and was very much in control of the race, then disaster struck as he picked up a puncture.
He said: “I felt the car washing out a lot on the right hand corners and knew something was wrong I pushed on through as best as I could for 2 laps which allowed the cars behind to catch up until my tyre gave up into the complex…. which meant we had to pull into the pits and retire the car with only two minutes left of the race. I was beyond gutted words cannot describe the emotion, but we will be back we proved our pace this weekend on a new circuit to me now onto circuits we know.
“I just want to say a huge thankyou to Wrightsure insurance and Oakleaf heating for their support over this weekend was great to see you all again and I hope you was pleased with the weekend.
“Another thank you to team hard racing Alex my number one was incredible and gave me a mega car! And to the boys at the unit who built and set the car up, Ray, Ollie and Charlie you made a great car lads!”
Image courtesy of Ady T @indythedoguk