Sheffield karting hero Russ Danzey didn’t only have to see off 20 rivals of the very highest calibre around for his latest podium finish at national level – he also had to beat the odds into the bargain, after a miscalculation ahead of the final left him grappling around for grip and under attack from all quarters. It was, by any measure, a phenomenal performance.

Russ headed into the fifth round of nine on the 2009 Formula Kart Stars (FKS) calendar at PF International as incontrovertibly the driver in-form, undefeated in the previous two meetings in the Lewis Hamilton and Bernie Ecclestone-backed series – the same one as set the former on the fast track to future Formula 1 glory just over a decade ago – and riding the crest of a wave as he bade to make it a hat-trick of successes. Had circumstances not conspired against him, he could well have done just that.
“To be honest, we were quite confident of being able to make it three wins in a row,” the 15-year-old confessed. “It’s the home track for both the JM Racing team and BRM in the UK, and we’ve done a lot of testing there so we know it like the back of our hand and we know the kart goes well around there. I used to go to there every week when I started working with my driver coach Tom Brown; it’s got a real mix of corners and a bit of everything really – if you can master PF I’d say you can master any circuit in the UK.
“The kart felt very good, and very stable once we got the set-up right; I felt like I could take most of the turns as quickly as anyone else. We just lacked a little bit of grip on the exit of the corners, which cost us time down the following straights.”
Nonetheless, after re-acclimatising to British competition following a European outing the weekend beforehand, Russ soon marked himself out as a threat come rain or shine. Though a set-up alteration for qualifying backfired, by working in tandem with his team-mate the Dore-based star was able to haul himself up the timesheets to third place at the end of a frantic and hotly-fought session, in which the leading trio wound up blanketed by a scant three hundredths of a second, and the top nine by a mere two tenths.
“I was a little bit disappointed not to be on pole,” he reflected, “but I knew if it was dry we’d stand a very good chance of winning – although if it was wet I feared we might struggle a little bit because we still weren’t entirely sure of the grip.
“I got held up a little bit at the start of the pre-final and dropped back several places. When it started to rain, though, I was able to not make as many mistakes as the others, was the second-fastest driver on the circuit and climbed back up to third place.”
With the entire KF3 class field out on slick tyres on an increasingly treacherous track surface, Russ’ superb kart control skills came to the fore once again, and kept him firmly in the hunt for the all-important grand final later in the day. With the heavens opening to drench the circuit before the race got underway, the cards suddenly all seemed stacked in the favour of FKS’ undisputed ‘rain master’ – or at least, in theory they were...
“We basically think we went the wrong way on tyre pressures,” he explained. “We were a second off the leading pace for most of the race – only eighth-quickest – and Tom said afterwards that I had done really well to stay in third. Everyone behind me was constantly trying to find a way past, but whilst they were making mistakes I wasn’t. 
“Later on another driver clipped my back wheel as he tried to overtake, which sent him into a spin and left me with quite a big margin over fourth place. After that I was hoping one of the two leaders might make a mistake or that they would collide with each other, but it never happened.”
Nonetheless, a podium finish when he was visibly struggling for grip was an outstanding achievement and practically akin to a victory in the circumstances, as Russ coped with intense pressure from lights-out to chequered flag and held his line to perfection to stave off every attack. 
He knew that just the tiniest of errors would likely have cost him a whole handful of positions and crucial ground in the drivers’ standings, but despite having as many as five or six karts crawling all over his rear bumper, Yorkshire’s brightest budding grand prix prospect never put so much as a wheel out of place, in the type of conditions that made it all-too easy to do so.
“Given what we had underneath us, I think it was a good result,” he surmised at the end of the weekend. “I was disappointed that we had got the tyre pressures wrong, because that ruined our chances of winning, but at the same time I’m still so proud of the team and of how far we’ve come since the season began.
“Crucially the result kept us in touch in the championship, and hopefully next time we can reduce the gap a bit. I’m the closest challenger to the leader, and the only one who can really stop him from taking the title.
“We go to Genk in Belgium next, and though I’ve not been there since I was in cadets, I remember enjoying it. It’s quite a quick circuit in general, but it has some slow corners too, and hopefully we’ll pick it up really quickly again and get another decent result to close down the gap at the top of the championship. We know we’ve got the kart to do that now.”
To keep up-to-date with Russ’ latest news and results, please visit: http://www.russelldanzey.co.uk