County Durham’s fast female Amanda Whitaker fought through the pack in the 2008 Historic Formula Ford season opener at Donington Park.

Having had only 2 weeks to prepare the 1971 Elden Mk8 prior to the first race with only half a day at Croft to shake down the car, she knew it would be tough. With just a handful of laps practice, she qualified further back than she would have liked in the field of over 36 cars.

However, she showed she had lost none of her skills come race time and made a fantastic start to jump a number of places on the opening couple of laps. She battled hard in the pack throughout the race and came through to finish 13th by the chequered flag.

She also competed in the Classic Racing Cars event having a close race to just steal 3rd in class on the last lap.

“We were struggling with a down on power engine – which we knew would be an unknown quantity with the car having stood unraced for so long. So I spent a lot of the time defending my position down the straights in both races, making it difficult to attack & move further forward” said Amanda.

However, she was upbeat for the remainder of the season “I’m pleased that we got a result and Dad & Rob (Story) did a fantastic job to sort a number of problems that occurred over the weekend. Apart from the engine, we also need to do some work with brakes & dampers – they might even be the original ones from 1971! The good news is we now know what we need to do to be competitive and we’ll keep working hard until we get to where we want to be.”

She races again at one of her favourite circuits Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire in a fortnight.