05/10/2026
🏆 First World Championships done for Henry Tomkinson! 🇺🇸
An amazing week out in America for the 1/8th Nitro Buggy World Championships at the incredible Thornhill Racing Circuit in Hutto, Texas.
This week was definitely more about experience than results for Henry. He comes home slightly disappointed with his overall finishing position, but having made massive improvements technically with the car and in his understanding of his driving.
Practice and seeding were mainly about learning an extremely difficult track… and trying his best to avoid the poles! 😂
Henry finished 142nd in seeding, putting him as Car 12 in Heat 6. For his first ever World Championships, he was reasonably pleased with that as a starting point.
Qualifying
Qualifying went surprisingly well after the struggles throughout practice. Henry recorded round results of 86th, 91st and 98th, which placed him 107th overall after qualifying.
Also, much to Dad’s delight 😂, we managed to get the car comfortably running the full 10 minutes, with time to spare, throughout the final four rounds of qualifying and into the finals!
Finals time! 🏁
Henry was placed into an incredibly tough final featuring UK National A Finalists Zak Edwards and Graham Alsop, 2025 2WD European Champion Martin Bayer, and plenty of other extremely talented drivers.
Knowing a bump-up was going to be difficult, Henry made a brilliant start and worked his way up to 4th within the opening three laps. Unfortunately a tyre partly came unglued creating a bundle of mistakes dropped him back to 11th before an engine cut following a crash on the big jump at the back of the track ended any chance of progressing.
No worries — onto the Junior World Final! 🌍
Henry qualified 6th for the Junior Final, which would be his first and last World Championships competing as a Junior.
He made another great start, completing an overtake into the first corner before working his way into P2 by lap three. A great battle followed between P2–P5 before Henry came in for his one and only fuel stop at around the 10-minute mark.
Unfortunately, he made a costly mistake on pit entry and crashed. The marshal didn’t initially spot the car until people from the side began shouting, resulting in a 54-second pit lap and a huge amount of lost time.
Henry pushed as hard as he could to recover, making up ground and gaining more time when the other drivers made their stops. Unfortunately, his race eventually came to an end when a grub screw in the rear drivetrain came loose, resulting in a DNF.
Definitely not the ending we wanted, but there are so many positives to take away from Henry’s first World Championships. A huge amount was learned throughout the week, both with the car and his driving, and it was an experience we won’t forget.
A massive thank you to David Pook and Jon Hazelwood for all the support throughout the event — and especially for all the jokes and laughs during the week in the Airbnb! 😂
Also another mention to GingaPaint for the amazing new shells with my stand-out new colours! Super fast turnaround with very little warning so thanks alot. They looked brilliant on track and helped me along to all my results.
🇮🇹 Next up: RedsGP in Italy!
Then it’s onto the winter season before we start counting down the days until the Montpellier GP in February!
Onwards and upwards! 🏁
