Jonathan 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).
His 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 for 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 lost 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,
Jonny 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…"
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