MotorsTV UK Official Blog

Hello everyone,

Well, I am back now from my first race in Barcelona at the weekend and it would be an understatement to say I was disappointed with my results.

I flew out on Wednesday evening and walked the circuit with my team on Thursday morning followed by the normal scrutineering and signing on etc. The weather was warm all weekend, always around 24 degrees celsius.

Formula BMW is situated in the F1 Support paddock along with the GP2 and Porsche Supercup teams. To be honest, it is not that much of a nice place to spend your time, all the teams are situated in a fenced off area where we can only get in and out through 2 exits with our unique ID passes.

The BMW hospitality can be a welcome break from this but it is pretty basic with just plastic chairs, tables and some TV’s which have a live feed of the circuit and the timing screens. The place usually gets incredibly busy for the F1 qualifying and the GP2 races because the passes we are given don’t allow us to any viewing areas so we too have to watch it on TV!! The highlight of the weekend in the hospitality is always the Saturday evening BBQ where BMW open up to the entire paddock to see Dr. Mario Thiessen and either Nick Heidfield or Robert Kubica come and talk to us drivers. It is great because we always get to hear firsthand how qualifying has gone and what they expect from the race the next day. Last year at the final race in Monza it was great as after the first race on Saturday evening nearly all of the past FBMW drivers now in F1 came down to the BBQ. Sebastien Vettel (after his debut pole earlier in the day), Nico Rosberg and Timo Glock were all present and it was very special.

Something else very interesting on a Saturday night is the GP2 area of the paddock. The cars are usually being rebuilt after the first race with the entire rear end usually separated from the car. I often just take a walk along to see what is happening. I stand at the front of the awnings gazing in and I hope one day I will be able to be part of that tremendous championship. The level of preparation is incredible from the teams and for a driver it must just be awesome.

Now, down to the serious stuff. My driving. We were very good in free practice and looking strong for the qualifying as we didn’t use any new tyres. However in qualifying all of my times were deleted due to the officials judging me to have left the circuit with 4 wheels on more than 2 occasions. It seemed very unfair, especially when they agreed I gained no advantage. It was frustrating but those were the rules and there was nothing I could do about it. I was just using the exit kerb on a corner!… I have done the same for 2 years at the circuit and nobody has ever said anything to me. F1 and GP2 do it lap after lap but when things are not going your way you just have to take it on the chin I guess.

I went to bed on Friday evening devastated. Essentially it was my fault but still, I was angry with everything but as I was starting in 26th there was not much for me to do apart from get on with it.

My first race was very good. From 26th I came through to 15th in 10 racing laps which is all I could do especially as I had a very bad understeer balance on the car.

For race 2 I managed a much better race into 15th but was right on the back of the group for 9th but I was out of laps. My pace was very good with 6th fastest lap and the balance of the car definitely felt much more suited to me and the conditions. The problem for me starting so far back was that even when I come through on the first lap I am about 5 seconds behind 10th place and because the pace is so close it takes so many laps to close up 5 seconds…. and get past people! I was still happy to end up in the final points scoring position for both races as those 2 points may count for something at the end of the year. The evidence was obvious for everybody to see though. If I started from the front 2 rows then for sure I would have finished there.

We will just have to wait until the next weekend for me to show my true potential.

I now have a test at Hungary next week before my next race at Zandvoort. I feel there is more time to be found in the car so we will work on this in Hungary to improve and have a better package at Zandvoort.

Apart from all that I will continue training hard here at home and also building my new remote control plane which is taking up a lot of my time!!

Thanks for your support and I look forward to updating you all again soon.

Rupert

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 11:14 am and is filed under Formula BMW Europe. 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.