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At the end of a hard afternoon's racing Seth finished a disappointed 17th out of 44 starters in the Lightweight Sprints at Rye House on 23rd April. Though he qualified for his fourth consecutive A-final out of four Club100 Sprint starts this season - an excellent record, which has moved him up to 9th place in the overall championship standings - his pace in the heats really should have put him on course for a top six finish on the day. The A-final was won in excellent style by 19-year old Andrew Smythe, who is looking like the LW championship favourite already.
In his first heat Seth came from 5th to finish a strong second. In his second heat an engine with poor bottom end was a handicap but he moved up from 12th to an eventual 8th. In the third heat he moved from sixth on the grid up to third and was running strongly - probably heading for an A-final grid position around row 3 - before an unlucky clash with the second place runner forced him into a spin.
"Just like Shenington, I was in my last heat and in sight of a really great starting position for the A-final. Then the second-place guy went very wide into the first hairpin and I went for the gap. But he turned in on me and that was that. I was gutted".
Lining up for the A-final, Seth hoped to repeat his sensational drive from the back up to 10th place at Shenington. His kart seemed down on power in the practice laps, however, and he came in for a kart change. This proved to be a mistake as the replacement kart had a really big understeer problem which was particularly bad at Stadium, costing him nearly a second per lap. So despite a great start, which saw him make up 6 places on the first lap, he started to slip back down the field amongst a group including Jonathan Wort and Simon Young.
"Not a great day, but at least I beat my Dad", said Seth (whose father Stephen came out of Sprint retirement for the day to race in the Lightweights and finished well down in the B-final after a number of incidents during the day). "Next round of the championship is at Clay Pigeon, which I'm really looking forward to, and before that I'm hoping to drive for IMSD Racing at the 10 hour race at Le Var in France on 5th/6th May".
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