After a rigorous testing campaign with Hillspeed by Cliff Dempsey Racing, British driver Jordan Cane has decided to leave the team before his debut race. Instead, the 16-year-old, who celebrated his birthday on Tuesday, will now race for the Douglas Motorsport team.
Cane will partner Callan O’Keeffe, who has picked up two podiums so far this season and sits fifth in the overall standings. The team won three races last year and helped Thomas Randle to mount a title challenge throughout the middle of the season.
The decision to leave the team before even his first race has surprised many, with the former Formula Ford USF2000 racer not choosing to announce his true reason for leaving the team.
“You don’t leave a team before you’ve done a race with them unless you’ve got very valid and justified reasoning behind that,” Cane told Motorsport News.
“It was pretty quick, the whole decision, in terms of preparation and meeting the team, but I knew Callan [O’Keeffe] from around the paddock and doing F3 testing.
“The whole team atmosphere is great and it’s so professional – I just feel like it was the right thing to do at the time.”
Cane was supposedly in talks with the Douglas team prior to the Rockingham round, with the youngster having tested with the team at Snetterton on May 10.
The move has left questions over the role of Petru Florescu, who had been scheduled to race alongside O’Keeffe during the rounds BRDC F3 did not clash with EuroFormula Open. A mediocre result at Oulton Park may have resulted in the Romanian focusing on his European-wide effort, forgoing his national commitments.
Cane should race for the rest of the season, starting this weekend at Snetterton, having been unable to compete in the first two rounds, due to being too young.
