MotorsTV UK Official Blog

Following the disappointment of race 2 at Jarama I was determined to have a strong weekend at Spa.

It was my first race meeting at Spa, although I did a test there in April but due to problems only completed 30 relatively slow laps. With this in mind I had hoped for more than just the two 30 minute test sessions on the Friday.

It was hard to know how competitive we were in testing as we didn’t know where other people were with tyres. So even though I ended the second session down in P.15, I wasn’t too disappointed as the car had good balance and I was quietly confident of having good pace with new tyres.

Quali exceeded all my expectations and I put in one of the best laps of my career on the very last lap to take P.5 overall and comfortably the fastest of the ‘06 cars.

Race 1 took place Saturday afternoon. I made a great start to exit turn 1 in P.3, but during the run up to Eau Rouge I was forced to back out of the throttle and was swamped on the following straight by some pesky ‘08 cars demoting me to 5th. The racing was extremely tough as the rules state that the ’06 spec cars must run the high downforce wings where as the ‘08′s can run the low downforce. This meant that even when in the tow of an ‘08 car I couldn’t keep up on Spa’s massive straights. Despite this I got back up to 4th on lap 3 only to get a hit up the back at the next corner smashing my diffuser and relieving me of much of my down force at the rear. It’s a great compliment to the Speedsport/West-Tec team that the car was still competitive enough around the slower corners that don’t require as much downforce for me to be able to stay in 4th position.

With about 6 laps to go I noticed that my pit board had P.3 on it, so I radioed to the pits and was told someone was handed a drive through penalty promoting me to 3rd. As the race wore on and the tyres were going off I really started to struggle with the lack of rear end aero and P.4, 5 and 6 (Scalbi, Legris and Miguez) were closing in on me. Determined to stay ahead I gave it my all and albeit a little too sideways at some of the high speed corners for a safe race pace I hung on to 3rd place to take my first overall podium of the season and another ‘06 class win.

Due to the reverse grid system for race 2 where the top 6 finishers from race 1 get reversed, I lined up for Sunday’s race in P.4. An even better start than race 1 saw me exit turn 1 in P.2. Again on the straight following Eau Rouge an ‘08 car easily towed by me and demoted me to third. Having had such a successful race 1 I was playing it safe (ish) in this race to make sure I collected another class win to cement my lead in the championship. Around lap 5, championship leader Bruno Mendez towed by me putting me 4th. My pace in the lengthy, twisty 2nd sector was fantastic and I was able to pull enough of a gap through here to protect me on the long straights. I was able to stay in touch with Mendez and followed him home in 4th overall and another ‘06 win.

Two more class wins leaves me with a 21 point lead in the Copa D’europe Championship and I’m lying 6th overall just 5 points shy of 3rd. My first visit to the incredible Spa-Francorchamps circuit has been brilliant and I look forward to the day when I can tackle Eau Rouge in a much more powerful single seater as it is a little too easily flat in the F3 car to get the full hold-on-for-your-life experience!!

Donington this weekend so I’m back on home soil and hopefully I’ll be able to make up the difference to the ‘08 cars with a bit of home track knowledge…..

Talk soon all

Bye

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 9:01 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.