HMD Kontro Engineer Neil Jessop Wins At Brands Hatch
Ford Power Live returned to Brands Hatch for a special day’s entertainment devoted to one of the planet’s great automotive manufacturers on 18/19 September. Entertainment on and off the circuit was Ford themed and included a busy race programme featuring two grids from the Modified Ford Series.
A ‘must attend’ event for Ford enthusiasts
Ford Power Live is the newest and most exciting event to arrive at Brands Hatch. It entered the calendar in 2017 and for enthusiasts it quickly became a ‘must attend’ event. It arrived at Brands Hatch in 2019 with a race timetable and track sessions. And on the starting grid this year in his Modified Ford was none other than HMD Kontro’s test engineer Neil Jessop driving his Ford Escort with the HMD Kontro logos.
Fastest in qualifying to take pole position
In the B Class, Neil clocked the fastest lap in qualifying. Wow! This gave Neil pole position in his shiny black Ford Escort with the HMD Kontro branding prominent to all the spectators. Unfortunately, the track was slightly greasy, so Neil wasn’t able to set a new lap record, but was naturally delighted to be quickest. However, he does hold the lap record of 51.141 seconds, which was set at this event in 2019.
Race 1 went well and despite a clutch issue he was able to stay at the front throughout and win. He was pretty pleased with that as you can imagine! And on his favourite race track too! Unfortunately, the clutch issue was too bad to take part in Race 2 so he had to watch from trackside. That must have been tough!
Ford Fair at Silverstone
Neil was also at Ford Fair at Silverstone on 8 August. This was not a competitive event, but more of an opportunity to showcase the Modified Ford Series. The event proved to be a big success with a lot of coverage of the cars on and off the track.
Fast Ford magazine profiles Neil Jessop
The Modified Ford Series also featured in the December issue of Fast Ford magazine. If you are into fast Ford cars, then this is the ‘must read’ magazine as it’s packed with features on cars and the latest news, with this issue featuring individual profiles on some of the drivers including Neil.
Roll on 2022 for the next Modified Ford series
The season is now finished for Neil in terms of racing but he’s not taking the winter off as he is already working on improvements for next year. He reports that it’s nothing major that needs doing to the car, just small tweaks that will hopefully make a difference. As a competitive racing driver, he is always trying to go faster and of course that fraction of a second could make all the difference.
There is also more good news as the 2022 racing calendar has been released and is looking good. Neil is planning to take part in as many races as his budget will allow. It’s an expensive hobby including transportation and maintenance costs.
The team at HMD Kontro congratulates Neil on a really successful season and we hope that the car goes even faster next year.
Further details about Neil’s racing in his modified Ford series have been shared previously on the HMD Kontro blog in both the ‘Fasten your seatbelts! The view from inside Car 63‘ and ‘On The Grid‘ posts.
