Although they showed their paces during the qualifying heats and semi-finals, the three Irish drivers who made it into the Grand Final of the Walter Hayes Trophy race at Silverstone today all retired from the main race of the weekend.
In the last major Formula Ford 1600 outing of the year, former Motorsport Ireland Young Racing Driver of the Year Jordan Dempsey from Mullingar, who won this event 12 months ago, took top place in his heat, which was stopped for an accident and restarted.
Dempsey went on to finish second in his semi-final and started the Grand Final from the second row of the grid. In atrocious weather conditions, the race was red-flagged to clear the debris from a five car pile up.
From the restart, the Irishman was in the three car leading bunch, but was spun off at Brooklands corner, rejoining at the tail of the field before retiring with a damaged nose cone.
Having taken sixth position in his heat, twenty-year-old Jonathan Browne, from Ratoath, Co Meath, was one of the victims of the five car incident, as was Morgan Quinn from Kildare, who finished ninth in heat and one place lower in semi-final. However, both of these also retired in the waterlogged conditions.