It was an easy error to make, given the tricky wet conditions of the Walter Hayes Trophy final. Yet the seemingly innocuous moment of Max Esterson putting a wheel on the wet white line at Brooklands and running slightly wide proved to have huge significance to last weekend’s Silverstone event.
That error allowed second-placed Tom Mills to draw alongside the leader around the outside into Luffield, only for GB3 driver Esterson to slide into the path of Mills, sending the GB4 racer into the gravel and ending his victory hopes (above). Then, over two hours after the final had concluded, it was the consequences of that original error that led to Esterson being penalised to fifth behind Mills in the provisional result, handing Joey Foster a record-breaking fourth Hayes victory.
And it is that error that means we still do not know the eventual winner, since Esterson and his Ammonite Motorsport team are now taking the matter to the National Court after an unsuccessful appeal to the stewards. “He went off the track at Brooklands and, into Luffield, I had my wheels in front,” said Mills of the collision. “He slithered wide and didn’t leave me a car’s width.” Esterson, speaking immediately after the race and long before any penalty was announced, did not believe he had done anything wrong, saying Mills “just ran out of room”.
Aside from that key moment, the final was generally pretty tame by Formula Ford 1600 standards. But it was certainly close. The top five circulated almost as one for much of the first seven of the 15 laps before the controversial clash.
Polesitter Foster was expecting a battle at the start as he was on the less favourable outside line for Copse. “I wasn’t sure how much grip there was going to be – I knew it was going to be a fight,” he said. And, sure enough, Esterson had powered his Ray GR18 into the lead from the front row into Copse, while Mills’s Spectrum had also relegated Foster to third. Mills continued his momentum and then challenged Esterson around the outside at Becketts but could not quite get ahead.
Behind, Mills’s Kevin Mills Racing team-mate Michael Eastwell was the driver on the move, climbing from sixth to fourth off the line as he continued his recovery from a heat-two incident, where three KMR Spectrums all wanted the same piece of track at Brooklands. He was showing impressive pace considering his relatively recent return to racing after three years out and was putting Foster under pressure.
While Esterson was eking out a lead of a few tenths, Eastwell eventually passed the Firman of Foster on lap six. Having gone around the outside of Brooklands, he then had the inside for Luffield. But it was not long before Foster was back ahead, profiting from the chaos of the Mills collision to nip past Eastwell again. The pair proceeded to switch places twice more over the next couple of laps, with Foster making the decisive move around the outside of Brooklands to seal the place and set off after Esterson.
He got incredibly close on a couple of occasions but a slide at Copse on the final tour meant he was unable to mount a proper attack into Brooklands for the last time, and Esterson crossed the line half a second clear after what he described as a “stressful” race. It initially looked like the American had joined an elite club of drivers, alongside Foster and Niall Murray, to win the Festival and the Hayes in the same year before proceedings in race control intervened.
“It was a fantastic race – and that’s why I’m here,” said Foster. “The track evolved through the race. My car got a bit more front-end positive and I made a couple of mistakes. I needed a couple more laps [to pass Esterson].” Eastwell, meanwhile, was delighted to take his first podium at an event where he has suffered misfortune in the past. “If you’re going to come second to anyone, Max and Joey are both class acts,” he added.
With Esterson’s provisional penalty, Eastwell was promoted to second and that brought Wayne Poole Racing’s Josh Fisher (Van Diemen RF99) into the top three for a fourth time. On his sole outing of the year, Fisher had been right in contention in the middle phase of the race before slipping back a little in the final couple of laps. “I was hoping they were going to take each other off!” he said of the trio battling ahead. “We made some changes to the car for the final and put new tyres on the back to try and give a bit more traction. But it took more laps than I thought for them to come in.”
Mills survived his gravelly moment, despite getting a collection of stones in his footwell that made the final laps tricky, but still picked off Lucas Romanek (Oldfield Van Diemen JL13) to take fifth across the line – which became fourth post-race, frustrated given he felt he had the pace to win.
Further back, South Africans Julian van der Watt and Robert Wolk had a thrilling battle in their Mygales to be best of the rest, before dropping back late on. Instead, it was 2020 Festival winner Rory Smith (B-M Racing Medina) who ended up seventh.
Wolk finished eighth at the head of an incredible train of nine cars that took the flag separated by just five seconds. This also included best Team USA Scholar Elliott Budzinski (Ammonite Ray GR18) and two-time winner Michael Moyers, debuting Simon Hadfield Motorsport’s new modified Medina, which completed the top 10.
While we know where these drivers finished, it is still unclear whether Esterson or Foster will be the eventual winner. The pair were the standout drivers of the event, each qualifying on pole and topping their heat and semi-final, and would therefore be deserving victors. But we now have to wait for the final chapter of the 2022 Walter Hayes Trophy to play out in the courtroom.
Report by Stephen Lickorish. Photography by Jakob Ebrey Photography. Want more reports from the world of national motorsport? Subscribe today and never miss your weekly fix of motorsport with Autosport magazine.
