HURST REAPS SUCCESS ABROAD

HURST REAPS SUCCESS ABROAD

Hector Hurst, a Rob Hanscomb Motorsport team driver in junior rotax, has only a few days ago returned from the lovely town of Valencia in Spain where his driving career to took a big leap forward.

In the middle of the season I was received an envelope from Germany which concealed an application form for the BMW Europe scholarship course which was to take place in Valencia. After a quick chat with my father about possible dates I filled out the form and sent it off.
I was very pleased a couple of weeks later to receive another letter which said that I had been accepted onto the course.
First off I had to prove that I was a cut above the rest by competing in the qualifying round of the course. This was a three-day assessment of several hundred drivers from across the globe. Due to the staggering numbers of entrants there were lots of qualifying rounds but each driver only had to attend one of them.
On the first day I arrived like a six year old on Christmas morning, even though the only thing on the planner was to receive our race gear and complete the seat fitting.
The next day was much more serious as we were split up into two groups and each were taught the theory of race driving, how to blip the throttle and so on. When each group had finished these lessons we were finally released from our cages and onto the track. My first taste of a racing car.
When we came in from each of our sessions we were all given a public gruelling from our dedicated racing instructors. Although this could at times be embarrassing due to their ‘cut the rubbish’ approach, each de-briefing was extremely helpful.
The third and final day was much the same as the previous and I was improving at a rapid rate. But I had to because where I had never even sat in any car like this before, there were people on the course who had spent the whole year testing and even owned their own machines. But by mid day I was posting fastest laps and pulling a few moves as well. The final part of our driving was a practice start and short-race. I had qualified third on the grid, but I quickly corrected this by moving into the lead and taking the win.
Due to my inexperience in cars compared to the others I was just aiming to have fun and do my best. Which is why I was even more delighted a few weeks after returning back to the UK to receive an e-mail confirming that I had earned a place amongst twenty others in the Final.