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Jarama was the venue for my second round of the European F3 Open Series. Due to noise problems there has been a complete ban on testing at the circuit pre-season and so we had no idea of what our car would be like at this circuit and i didn’t know what to expect either.

Free practise went very well considering the lack of track experience, i loved the circuit, it’s full of highly cambered corners and very little run off areas, it’s one of the old school style circuits and definately one that favours the brave. I ended up p.6 overall and p.1 in the ’06 class so not a bad first session.

Quali didn’t go so well, struggled with the balance of the car and ended up a disapointing 11th and 3rd in class with my team mate in the ’08 car an equally disapointing 13th. At least I had an exciting race to look forward to from row six.

My start was excellent and I moved from 11th to 9th by the second corner. Then, by lap 3, I was in 8th and 1st in class. My car was much better in race trim and I was all over the back of p.6 and 7. The aerodynamics of an F3 car can a real issue when it comes to overtaking, especially for an ’06 car having to drive through the huge hole in the air that the ’08 cars leave in their wake. I was pretty much stuck in 8th and there was very little I could do. Luckily, however, it rained for one lap towards the end of the race and this gave me my oppurtunity to progress. I passed Jonathon Legris as he ran wide exiting the hairpin and then on the same lap outbraked Neil Monserat around the outside of the final hairpin on the circuit to move into P.6.

I remained in P.6 and p.1 in class until the chequered flag. If your not in the top three overall in the first race then 6th is where you want to be as the top six finishers get reversed, meaning I would start race two from pole!!

My start in the second race was good and I led into the first corner, however, this was very short lived as i was forced onto the marbles and understeered off on the exit through the gravel and right down the order to p.18. I made up three or four places with some pretty daring overtaking manouvres only to be then taken out on the following lap…. Gutted, my first F3 pole hadn’t gone quite how i’d hoped. Still, I’m now 7th in the overall championship and leading the ’06 title. Looking forward to Spa where hopefully i can extend my ’06 championship lead and get right amongst it at the sharp end with those ’08 cars…

Talk to you all soon

Callum Macleod

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 8:11 am and is filed under Formula 3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.