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Some good progress

29.03.2015 -
After another myracingcareer year, we look to review how the season went for R.Headington and what lies ahead in the future.

S12 F2 Oceania Series

This was a bitter-sweat Series for us. On the one hand, we came a very strong 3rd after a fantastic battle with Lamy. If we were offered this at the start of the season, we would have been very satisfied with the result.

But on the other hand we should have done better, at least closing the gap with Milo which was a massive 89 points. We have beaten him in custom series and have been generally very close to him over the past couple of years. So although we didn't expect to beat him, we felt it should have been close.

The main reason for this was reliability. Now our team does not agree with some other driver's "high speed bingo" belief. Sometimes drivers make mistakes or something breaks down on the car. It happens, it's disappointing but that's racing. So although we were cursing our luck that our first (and so far only) qualifying DNF happened to occur during this F2 series (and ruined that entire weekend with no points) we got over it.

However it was particularly disappointing that with our F2 risk settings, we retired 15% of the time in F2 compared to the 1.74% retirement rate which we had in the 115 other races with the same settings. However sometimes these disappointing runs happen. Hopefully it will rebalance itself in the next few seasons by giving us no retirements in these vital Series races.

But to end this section on some positive notes, we got an F2 trophy on our first attempt. We managed to beat Milo by 21 points over the last 10 races (shame he beat us by 110 points in the first 10). And we got two wins, winning the final race.

Custom series

We have taken part in four different custom series this season and are overall very happy with our progress.

Beach Cup XXXVI

This was the first custom series of the season where we came a very satisfying 2nd place due to our consistency. This season's Indy Junior International Series winner, M. Aleshin, used a mix of speed and consistency to win the series. Although F1 driver N. Essartal won more races than anyone else, our 9 podiums (no wins), 12 top 5 places and getting points every race meant that we were able to beat him by 18 points.

Arskap Cup XLII

With 2 laps to go of the last race, F1 driver Diesel took 2nd place gaining the 3 points he needed to beat me to the title by a point. However we were proud that we managed to push him that far and that we managed to beat this seasons Formula 2 South America Series runner up H.Horstmann (formally D. O'Brien) by 31 points.

For more details on one of the most exciting custom series that has ever happened, read:
http://www.myracingcareer.com/en/press-releases/ 2793/

Poland Cup XXIII

Our 3rd trophy in 3 custom series. We were nowhere near Formula 2 World Series runner up M. Gnojarzowski, but were only 6 ponts behind Diesel as we took 3rd place. Formula 2 Asia Series runner up M. Galimov and F1 driver T. Laine were the closest challengers to the bronze trophy.

Asian Trophy XI

M. Gnojarzowski and E. Haapala (4th in this season's NASC Gold Cup Series) lead the way in this series as Haapala edged the series. The last trophy was competed for by 3 racers; Formula 3 American Series winner J. Smith, E. Diesel and ourselves.

Going into the final race, any one of these 3 could have taken it, with only 8 points between them. Unfortunately for us, we were the the ones who were 8 points behind. Despite coming 2nd in the final race, we couldn't stop Smith finishing 3rd in this race which gave him the final trophy.

We finished 4th, 3 points ahead of our custom series rival Diesel making it 2-1 to Diesel. If you add the 3 custom series that me and Diesel competed together, he got only 4 more points than myself over 36 races!

General Racing

Statistically, this has been our most successful season by far, smashing personal record after personal record. We have had over double the amount of poles and podiums this season than we had in our first 4 seasons combined! We have more top 5 finishes in both qualifications and races this season than we had in our first 4 seasons put together. Not only have we qualified in the top 10 more than any other season, we have done this an astonishing 96.7% of the time. And it's a similar story in the races, 198 top 10 race finishes is a record.

But there have been other good progress. We have collected a lot of new important data on lots of different tracks around the world. Our team has expanded to 6 at the moment (our driver, 4 employees and myself) and we are making good progress with increasing our training cash from our sponsors.

Next season

We are going to race again in the F2 Oceanic Series. Our minimum expectation is to take 3rd place again. However, we want a title challenge and think we might have a chance of taking that top spot. So we'll see what happens. We would like to use this to break into the top 70 in the world, possibly top 60.

We are also looking forward to the first ever Nations cup. We hope that we will compete in it as we feel that Headington is one of the strongest drivers in the UK. It will be an exciting competition and it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Other than that, we would like another three custom series trophies, preferably with our first ever custom series win. And we want to continue gathering the data we need from tracks around the world.