Coaching News

05/11/2008

Lewis Hopkins wins a Porsche Scholarship

To win a scholarship of any kind in racing is a nice achievement but to win one from Porsche with the likes of Richard Westbrook judging is just about as good as scholarships get and that’s precisely what 19 year old client Lewis Hopkins has achieved.

Perhaps most impressive of all is that unlike his five rivals for the scholarship Lewis has only raced a 120bhp 600kg road tyred Caterham. When you take into consideration that a Caterham laps on average 10 seconds slower than any of his competition were used to you can start to see what a huge jump this was. Add into this slick tyres, a sequential gearbox and a 300bhp hike and you can see that it was an impressive performance from Lewis making us all very proud.

Lewis has always had natural talent, that was never in question but in 2007 he struggled to make the top 10 in RSA. For 2008, he joined team Fauldsport and I was tasked by his father Henry and team boss Stuart Faulds to "unlock his talent", a task I enjoyed very much.

Getting Lewis on the pace was the easy bit and in the wet he was in a class of his own but it was crossing the barrier of taking wins that was the hardest work for us both. However, once he crossed that bridge at Donington Park in September he was unstoppable with only team mate and regular client James Sharrock able to even live with him.

So now we have the exciting challenge of moving Lewis into the Porsche Carrera Cup GB in 2009 supporting the BTCC and competing alongside fellow scholarship winner and more experienced Tom Bradshaw.