Banbury based Ashton Cox is proud to run the only Gillard chassis in the Wera Tools British Kart Championships TKM Extreme category – and so he should be. The 16-year old Klassen Motorsport racer stormed his way to 12th overall in the championship in 2022 and with it, scooped the Rookie award.
Having honed his skills on the indoor kart circuits, Cox progressed into Tyro Karting before moving onto Junior TKM and acquiring the Gillard chassis he stills runs to this day. Whilst he has his sights set on a British Championship title, he mounted an assault on the TKM Extreme series this season with some great results as the year progressed, fourth place in the PFi Final a particular highlight.
“It was nice [to win the Rookie title], but this first season was just a steppingstone to greater things” says Ashton.
“Starting at Shenington we struggled in qualifying which would be a theme that would reoccur at each round. But when it came to the racing, we had blistering pace throughout the first weekend. Warden Law was always going to be a struggle with the limited testing that we could afford, we moved onto Rissington hoping for better things but had a bad weekend, we had been extremely quick there in testing before the round but we made multiple mistakes with the setup leading to a struggling weekend. At Whilton Mill we struggled for pace across the weekend, slowly getting the kart up to speed but in the final, we had major engine issues which is why we suffered. PFI was an absolutely amazing weekend, going into the round we thought we would struggle to be anywhere near the pace, but work from my dad and I allowed us to push forwards even after setbacks, such as cracking our main chassis on the Friday testing, to ending up with our best result of the season and it was such a satisfying result.”
Being the only karter on the chassis means that data and setup can be limited. But he feels it’s been a development year behind the wheel and aims to hit the ground running in 2023 and a return to TKM Extreme. However, life may get a little busy…
“In this past week I have started an Apprenticeship with Alpine F1 which is such an amazing opportunity for me and my family which will make racing a bit more complicated, but we are still willing to give it our best shot!”
Congrats’ Ashton!