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The first round of the Lightweight Sprint Championship on 2 March 2008 gave Seth his best Club100 result to date. The race was held in surprisingly dry conditions and he shone over the course of day.
Seth had been seen testing the new C100 karts at Rye House just two weeks before and showed pace immediately; ‘I feel a lot more comfortable in these karts, as they feel so much like the karts I drove in the good old F6 days.’ However with this being his only track time since the end of the 2007 Sprint Championship it was unknown how well he would manage driving amongst drivers who had raced in the Winter Championship or the day before in the Endurance race.
For his first heat Seth lined up 13th on the grid. He managed to work his way up to P6 in just one lap and then took two more places to find himself chasing the leading trio and on the tail of Eddie Hall. . When Ray Morgan sent a barrier flying and was shown the penalty board Seth and Eddie backed off assuming that he would be docked two places at the end. They were therefore surprised to find that he would instead have one place deducted from his final grid position. ‘This was entirely my fault for not reading the rules properly’ said Seth ‘but it’s annoying because both Eddie and I could have passed him giving us more points.’
In heat number two he lined up 6th on the grid but was ruthless round the outside of the first corner and managed to take fourth by the end of lap 1. He then passed Richard Smith and Steve Bailey to take second before setting off in pursuit of the leader Colin Beckley. Unfortunately he ran out of time and finished less than two tenths of a second behind.
With these two good positions, Seth only needed to conserve his grid position of 9th in the final heat to qualify well for the A-Final. He was, however, not prepared to drive conservatively and pulled out all of the stops to finish third despite having his worst kart of the day. These fantastic heat results meant that Seth qualified 2nd for the A-final with Guy Holiday on pole and Eddie Hall third.
The final was reasonably uneventful for Seth as he took the lead briefly before Eddie Hall came past under braking for the first hairpin. The duo then pulled out a five second lead from the rest of the pack with Deuchar trailing Hall by a couple of tenths of a second. For a while Eddie could not escape but soon Seth started falling back. ‘I dropped a wheel onto the grass under braking and I think I damaged something because from then on I had very little rear end grip and after the race there was a chunk of rubber missing from the tyre.’ Seth managed to hold his position and finished a delighted second. ‘I’m so pleased to have finally got on the podium and for Eddie to win made it an ex-IMSD 1-2. I think that my aim for this year has to be to get a win and although the next race isn’t for 8 weeks, I can’t wait. I am also looking forward to racing alongside Eddie again in the Le Mans 24hr race later this year.’
Seth’s Dad Stephen, also racing in the Lightweights on this occasion, had a mixed day, winning a heat and qualifying on P7 for the A-final, and might have made it an ex-IMSD 1-2-3 if he hadn’t spun out on lap 2 whilst challenging for third place.
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