It’s been a really busy two months since the last British F3 race at Oulton Park.  Away from the race track I’ve been revising hard for my final set of A-level exams.  I’ve just taken my last exam and had my last day at sixth form which was definitely a day of mixed emotions!

After the race weekend at Oulton Park I spent most of my time juggling my revision with fitness training.  I headed down to the McLaren Technology Centre for a few days to do some fitness work with the team there, as well as the usual training in the gym.

We headed to Snetterton in May for the next round of the Championship. It was a really tough weekend as we suffered an engine misfire in qualifying which meant I started the races way back in sixteenth position.  As Jenson Button proved in the Canadian Grand Prix, it’s possible to work your way through the field when you’re racing in wet conditions, but on this type of track we were racing on and when the conditions are dry it’s so tough to make up a lot of places, so I knew I had a difficult three races ahead of me. 

After Snetterton there was a one month gap until the next race weekend so I quickly drew a line under the disappointment of the race weekend and began to focus on Brands Hatch.  As well as keeping on top of my training I also had some time to go out for clay pigeon shooting with the new gun that I’d got for my birthday.  It’s a sport that I’ve been doing for a while now and after a few lessons I’m steadily getting better!

Despite it being June, and supposedly the middle of summer, the weather conditions for the Brands Hatch race weekend made it feel more like March! It had been a long wait since Snetterton so I was really looking forward to going racing again.

We had a really strong free practice session where I set the third fastest time so we were confident of a good qualifying.  However, things weren’t to go entirely to plan and although I was running in the top five for most of the session, I got stuck in bad traffic right at the end and dropped all the way down to P11.  It was definitely frustrating as we had the pace all weekend to be in the first three rows of the grid.

Race one ended up being the first wet race of the season, and actually the first wet race I’ve ever driven in. Just before the start of the race there was a huge torrential downpour which caused all sorts of chaos getting everyone lined up ready for the start and ensuring the cockpits of our cars weren’t getting flooded by water!

I had a good start to the race but then lost some time in the pit stop when we came in to change our wet tyres for slicks as there was an issue getting one of the rear tyres on. This unfortunately moved me down the field so I just missed out on the points.

The final race of the weekend on Sunday was also wet, but this time it rained throughout the race rather than just before the start, which threw up a whole new set of racing challenges!  I started the race in P11 and made one of my best starts this season; up to P8.  The rain came down really heavily throughout the race which made it virtually impossible to see with all the spray coming up from the cars.  It was definitely tricky keeping on the black stuff in those conditions!  There were lots of cars going off all around me but I kept pushing on and crossed the finish line in P6.  My best finish of the season so far and definitely one of the toughest races I’ve driven in.

It felt good to have a strong result and to pick up six Championship points after a weekend of tricky racing conditions.  We now head back into mainland Europe and to the Nurburgring, a track which I have raced at before in Formula BMW in 2009.   It would be great to be able to build on the sixth place we got at Brands and start building on our tally of Championship points as we enter the second part of the season.

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