Well the season may be over for me as far as racing goes but that doesn’t mean that I have been any less busy.
The week after the Formula Ford Festival I was pretty flat out with having a couple of seat fittings, taking part in the Henry Surtees Foundation Karting event at Buckmore Park, doing some more testing and development work at Silverstone with Ford on the new ECO boost FF car and then having dinner at the BRDC on Friday evening with Red Bull F1 team boss Christian Horner! Then barely a couple of days to recover before flying off first thing Monday to take part in the two day GP3 test at Barcelona. It’s all go, go, go as Murray Walker would say!
I love driving karts and don’t need too much encouragement to get my backside into one so when I was invited to take part in the Henry Surtees Foundation Fundraising event I was delighted to accept especially as it was raising funds for such a worthy cause. The fact that it was taking place at Buckmore Park was a real bonus as it is a circuit that I have a great affection for and one that I had considerable success at during my karting career. I’ve probably told you all before that I had my very first race there as a young cadet back in January 1998 and have loved the place ever since and still return there regularly in my role assisting the Project One Racing team.
The event itself was bit of a who’s who of young UK motor racing talent and although everyone of course wants to win the emphasis for me anyway was particularly on having some no pressure fun especially after such a successful season. All was going very well though. I qualified 2nd in my group of 20 drivers just behind my old Buckmore adversary Paul Janes and this put me on grid 4 for the pre-A-Final. Unfortunately this was as good as it got as I think due to some naughty person loading further back on the grid I, along with Paul, was binned at the first corner! Welcome back to karting! By the time I got going again I was well back but did manage to pick a couple off giving me a grid 22 slot for the main A-final.
I made an excellent start and ran as high as 7th in the early stages of the race but the kart didn’t seem to be handling particularly well as the race progressed and I slipped back to 11th. Still that was good enough for the judges to bestow the Hard Luck Award on me which I was proud to receive. And my prize? Well someone must have a sense of humour! I won a week’s unpaid work experience at the offices of Haymarket Publishers who produce many top motoring titles including Autosport, Motorsport News and F1 Racing magazine. But they are going to let me write an article….hmmm…now let me see.
Joking apart it was a great event and a privilege to participate in it and I very much hope that it becomes an annual fixture as always it’s great to see John Surtees who is a true legend. Congratulations to Alex Sims on winning the event.
From Buckmore it was back up to Silverstone for a day of development testing with the Ford ECOboost car which some of you may have seen me demonstrating between races at the Formula Ford Festival. I’m really enjoying this and it’s very satisfying when you are part of the process that resolves some of the inevitable problems that you have when launching a new car. But I believe that overall Ford and Mygale, who manufactured the car that I have been driving, are to be commended for their vision and hard work in trying to ensure that Formula Ford continues to develop as a place for aspiring young drivers to learn their trade.
Later the same day my 2011 race mechanic Tom Huxtable and I attended a dinner at the BRDC at Silverstone with Red Bull F1 Chief Christian Horner and this was a fascinating insight into the most successful F1 team around at the moment and their winning philosophy. It was a highly enjoyable evening and I’d like to thank the BRDC very much for arranging such events for the members of their young driver programmes.
Hardly time to catch my breath and we were flying off to Barcelona to participate in the FIA GP3 test with the Status Grand Prix Team. This came about fairly eleventh hour but it was great to be called up to do it and I’d very much like to thank Allied Commercial Finance, PL Finance & Investment & CANNONBALLTOUR.COM for making it possible.
There was certainly a lot to learn during the two day’s and I was the only one of the 26 drivers taking part that hadn’t been racing in a winged Formula. But the team and I agreed a programme to work through and I set myself some clear objectives for the test which were aimed solely at learning the circuit and gaining a greater understanding of how the car and the aero package worked and how any changes could affect the handling characteristics and I’m pleased to say that in that respect the two days were highly successful and I’d like to thank the Status Grand Prix Team and all of the mechanics and engineers for making us feel very welcome.
I very much enjoyed my GP3 experience and would like to do more if given the opportunity but at this stage it isn’t the only option that we are considering for next year. But there will be no quick decisions, a lot has to be considered and of course I have the little matter of the McLaren AUTOSPORT BRDC Young Driver Award competition to participate in this month and I am really looking forward to it especially now that I know the great cars that I will be driving.
But before all that though I shall be getting out in another fund raising kart event tonight at Sandown Park, in aid of 21 & Co, where I will be joining the Motorsport News Team entered by Rob Ladbrook and let’s hope we are not black flagged this year eh Rob! Actually it was certain Indy Lights driver that caused our downfall last year. You know who you are if you are reading this!
So until next time,
All the best,
Scott
* All photos provided by Drew Gibson /GP3 Series Media Service
It’s strange to think that the 2011 British F3 season is already over. Where did the time go?! It’s been a real rollercoaster but we finished the year on a high with five podiums in five races and can be really proud of our achievements.
The last four race weekends saw us travel to Spa, Rockingham, Donington and finally one of my favourite circuits on the calendar: Silverstone.
We headed to Spa full of confidence off the back of my debut win at the Nurburgring and another podium finish at Paul Ricard. We had a really tough first half of the year, but things started to turn around for us following the win in Germany and we were determined to make the most of the momentum for the closing races.
I raced at Spa last year in Formula BMW and it is one of the ‘greats,’ a genuinely demanding track with one of motorsport’s best corners in Eau Rouge. The grids for the races in Spa were bugger than usual as we were joined by competitors from the Formula Three International Trophy. We had a decent qualifying session that saw me line up in P7 for race one and from there I was able to fight my way through the pack to another podium finish. Races two and three were a little trickier, but I was still able to pick up a haul of Championship points with fifth and sixth place finishes.
Next up it was time to return to the UK for the final three race weekends of the season. We headed to Rockingham first where I continued my run of podium finishes with a fourth in succession! After all the problems at the start of the year it was a fantastic feeling for the whole team to be standing up on that podium race after race. We always knew we had the pace to qualify well and finish in the top three, so it was hugely satisfying to have put the problems to one side and be bringing home strong results.
After a month’s break in the season it was then time to go to Donington for the penultimate race weekend of the year. Here we had the best qualifying of the season, lining up in P2 and on the front row of the grid. Qualifying has been incredibly close this year and this weekend was no exception as I missed out on pole by just seven hundredths of a second!
Donington was one of those weekends where you taste the highs and the lows of motorsport. In race one I secured yet another podium finish that moved me up the Championship standings, but in race three, whilst running in P2, we had an issue with the car and I was forced to retire – so disappointing! But despite the disappointment of not being able to come away with two podium finishes there were a lot of positives to take from the weekend, namely that we had the pace to be consistently running in the top four. We have come incredibly far as a team since the start of the season. To be recording our fifth podium in as many races showed we were running at the top on a regular basis and was a really strong end to the year.
The final race weekend took place at Silverstone. It is one of my favourite tracks and I had been looking forward to competing there all season. We took part in a test just prior to the race weekend and were regularly running in the top three so headed into the event feeling confident of securing at least a couple more podium finishes.
The weekend started off really strongly with us running in the top three during free practice. Qualifying however was an entirely different situation. We had issues with tyre pressure that meant I wasn’t able to get sufficient heat into the rubber, which in turn meant we were off the pace and qualified in ninth. I was gutted as we had the pace to be in the top three and I knew we faced an uphill struggle to record some decent point finishes in the races.
Despite the difficulties at Silverstone, I was still able to finish my rookie year in the Championship ninth overall. We would loved to have ended on a high at the last race weekend but sometimes things are out of your control and the results prior to Silverstone were a brilliant end to the season.
It’s only been a couple of weeks since the final race of 2011 but we’re already back into testing for next season – it really never stops in motorsport! There will be some time off for me over Christmas but apart from that it’s non-stop testing and training. Looking back, I’ve really enjoyed my year in British F3 and now look forward to seeing what 2012 will bring…
Follow Jack on Twitter @jack_harvey42
www.jackharveyracing.com
Round 10 of the 2011 DTM and we headed back to where it all started at the beginning of the season; Hockenheim.
The week leading up to this race had been a tough one: the loss of Dan Wheldon in a crash at the final Indycar race of the season at Las Vegas rocked the world of motorsport and hit me pretty hard personally. Dan had been winning everything when I first started racing karts in the UK and was therefore someone I looked up to. I got to know Dan in his early career as we all travelled the country competing in the British Karting championships.
Dan was really at a great point in his career and life. He had just signed a deal for 2012 and had a wife and two young boys, which is something I can really relate to and that makes his death, doing what we all love so much, really hard to take in. It reminds us of the dangers in motorsport and just how cruel it can be at times.
A race weekend was exactly what we all needed to take our minds off of it and focus on something else. I did, however, request that I wear an arm band in Dan’s memory just to show we were still thinking of him.
It was an earlier than usual start to the weekend as we drove out on Wednesday morning. The whole family was off to Hockenheim and it’s certainly a lot easier to pack them into a car than get on a plane! A two-hour drive down to Folkestone, a short train ride and a six-hour drive through three countries and we were there.
Waiting for us was a great big motorhome kindly supplied by Stingray RV for the weekend; loads of space for the kids to run riot for the weekend!
On Thursday morning, we all took a drive down to Metzingen just south of Stuttgart to visit the guys at Hugo Boss and do a bit of shopping, before heading back to the track for the pre-race briefings and track walk. When I say track walk I actually mean a quick scooter ride in a big winter jacket! It has never been this cold here before surely!!?? It was under 10 degrees outside and felt a lot more like a winter testing day than a race weekend.
The whole team was pumped up for a good finish to the year. The championship had been decided at Valencia with Martin Tomczyk taking the title so this was a clean fight to claim victory in the final race of the season.
The winter-like weather continued into Friday morning with a two hour delay to the roll out session because of thick fog. Once it cleared we were away and, with some good work by the organisers, we made up all the time lost during the day without cutting our session short. The afternoon test went well; we completed a long run and some good race setup. We clearly ran a different program to others and this meant that the four HWA Mercedes cars finished the session in 12th, 15th, 16th and 18th positions. I was 15th after completing 34 laps and was actually pretty happy with the car balance. The most important change to the car during the session was to close all the driver cooling ducts as it was turning my fingers and feet to ice!!
This weekend was the end of the 2011 season but also and possibly more importantly the end of the C-Class in the DTM. From next year we will be running the AMG Mercedes C-Coupe and so this was a farewell to the most successful DTM car in history with 84 wins from 158 races – and I have contributed 17 wins to this tally. This car also brought me my championship win in 2005 and all the recent title winning cars were on display in the “RaceClub”.
On Friday Evening during the team dinner we had a few interviews from Norbert Haug amongst others and some really good footage of the C-Class in the DTM which brought back a lot of memories from years gone by. How young we all were back then!
There were no fog delays on Saturday morning and the second test session was completed without problems. Concentrating more on qualifying setup I completed 28 laps and ended the session in 11th position 0.4 seconds back from the quickest time. Audi dominated the session with seven out of the top ten cars so it looked like qualifying might be tough.
Qualifying was certainly different. Audi were not dominating as they had in the morning session and Jamie Green ended Q1 in first place. I had made a mistake on my first lap and had a mad dash to get out and do another run late in the session. I got through to Q2 but only in 12th position. There was a lot more time in the car I just had to pull the perfect lap together.
In Q2 I got a really good lap together and finished up in P2 just behind Molina with Mathias Ekstrom the biggest name to drop out in 10th position.
In Q3 I wasn’t able to quite repeat the lap time from the previous session and I finished the session in 7th position; a little disappointing but we just didn’t have the speed in the session. With qualifying over, the dominant Molina would start on pole for the second time in three races, with Green in a good second place ahead of three more Audi’s. Spengler was 6th, with me 7th and Olly Jarvis in 8th. It was not where I wanted to be on the grid but we still had a chance of scoring some good points from there.
On Saturday evening, the C-Class celebrations continued with a Champions’ parade with Klaus Ludwig, myself, Bernd Schneider and Paul Di Resta standing next to our championship winning C-Class cars and then unveiling the 2012 C-Class Coupe with the help of two time F1 world champion Mika Häkkinen.
In the morning warm-up session Molina dominated once again; heading the field by 0.24s from Champion Tomczyk. I finished the session in 7th position just 0.2 seconds back from Tomczyk.On Sunday morning at breakfast we were once again for the second time in a week reminded of the dangerous world we live in, with reports that Marco Simoncelli the 24 year-old Moto GP ace had lost his life in a crash at Sepang. He was a really exciting racer and had his whole career ahead of him. R.I.P. Marco.
As we prepared for the race the sun was out but it was still damn cold! Around 10 degrees and the usual ride on the back of the cabrios for the driver parade was not as enjoyable this time around. We stopped at the Mercedes grandstand for an interview in front of the fans and headed back to the starting grid. After a chat with the engineer and a few good luck handshakes I got in the car ready for the final race of the year.
We set off and the warm-up lap was busier than usual. With the cold temperatures, the drivers had to work a lot harder to get the tyres up to racing temperature so cue a lot of vigorous weaving and hard braking. At the start I had a good launch; getting alongside Spengler into turn one and making most of the tarmac run off I managed to stay there into turn two. I stayed on the outside into turn two, which became the inside of turn three and I was past. I was dropping back slightly from the battling Rockenfeller and Scheider but pulling away from fellow Brit Jarvis.
As planned, we stopped very early on lap 10 and so did Rocky. Scheider stopped one lap later and as he exited I was through turn one. Having the benefit on warm tyres I got alongside him into turn two and squeezed him to the inside. I got round the outside and through into 5th place. I had to defend for about five laps; the Audi having a much better straight line speed meant I was vulnerable into the turn four hairpin but I managed to pull a small gap and then set about catching Rocky.
Scheider stopped very early for his second stop to try and jump me but we matched him and stayed ahead. With 20 laps to go we had to look after our tyres. I was trying to catch Rocky but we had such a similar pace it was proving very difficult. Behind me, Ekstrom had made his way up to 6th and on fresher tyres was starting to catch me as my tyres started to go off.
I couldn’t catch Rocky and so for the last five laps concentrated on staying in front of Eki. I crossed the finish line for the final race of the year in 5th position, helping me move up to 7th in the championship. With Bruno struggling and only finishing in 9th place, he also lost 2nd place in the standings to Ekstrom. Jamie Green was the runaway winner of the final race; winning by 7.5s and taking the C Class win tally to 85/159.
Mercedes put on a really good season end party on Sunday night where the dress code was the traditional German lederhosen! Not our usual attire but we enjoyed letting our hair down and partying through the night.
Generally, Hockenheim was a positive end to a difficult season and, for me, 2012 can’t come soon enough! Enjoy the rest of the F1 season and have a great winter, see you in 2012!!
Follow Gary on Twitter @garypaffett
This weekend was the final chance to win my second championship title. I had already won my class and was crowned the best Jaguar saloon driver for 2011 but that’s not the same as being overall champion.
My main rival is also one of my good racing mates, Chris Palmer. He has won the XJ-S Championship, before saloons and XJ-S’s merged this year, twice before in 2008 and 2009 and was likely to be the top XJ-S driver after this weekend having led from early in the season. He was ahead of me by 4 points in the overall standings after my lead, which had lasted for three months was lost when I only scored half points in two events due to low entries.
I had to max out in both races beating my main class rival Rich Dorlin (last years champion), his dad Pete also an ex champion saloon racer and two other guys both top notch drivers. I was hoping for Chris to drop a few points.
Qualifying went perfectly with me sitting 6th on the 28-car grid, first of the saloons. Palmer was 4th but 2nd in class; he dropped a point on me cutting his advantage to just 3 points. If it finished like that I would only be one point adrift and if I got fastest lap in class we would be level for the final race on Sunday.
The start was good, Rich was right behind me on the grid and that’s where he stayed as we went onto the back straight. However Palmer passed Ramm, his main class rival, which was bad news for me. Then a few laps later Ramm re-passed him, which was good for me except that shortly after Rich out braked me going into the Esses, his car is around 50kg lighter and has about 30 more bhp so it was always a hard task to keep him behind me but I do know how to make a big old tank even bigger on track!
However when he missed a gear exiting the corner I was so close I could not avoid shunting into the back of his car, place made up! I had lost a light, half my front bumper and was a bit worried about the coolant warning light but faint hearts never won a championship!
Soon after that Palmer got back in front of Ramm, bad news again for me which got worse when about three laps from the end Rich did me again at the Esses only this time didn’t miss a gear exiting the corner. We crossed the line a second apart and he pipped me to fastest lap by one-tenth…aaargh! Worse still Palmer got fastest lap in his class also by one tenth.
That meant that with the final race the next day his lead was up to 6 points.
I needed a miracle and a small mechanical problem (or maybe a little puncture) to befall Chris and I would need to win to have any hope.
The start was a nightmare. Surrounded by quick V12 XJ-S’s I got baulked and left out to dry on the outside of the first hairpin as Rich held the inside line. With two V12’s, very quick in a straight line, between us I had to get past them before having a go at Rich. Meanwhile I could see Palmer clear of Ramm and, try and try as he might he could not get past. Towards the end my slim hopes faded completely when Ramm’s engine blew forcing him to park in the outfield.
All I had left was pride and the chance to get a season ending win. After a bit of paint scraping and after dropping a place to Pearce’s Mk2 and getting it back again a lap later, I was finally on Rich’s tail. With just two laps left though it was an impossible task and we crossed the line a second apart. I did get fastest lap by some three tenths though and so ended my championship season.
I am class B winner and overall top scorer in Jaguar saloons but I wont be carrying number one next season.
The car is looking a bit sorry too but with the Birkett 6 hour relay ahead this weekend a bit of sticking plaster and tlc will have to do. Chris is in our team, The Six Potters, and we will be hoping to emulate our win from two years ago, albeit with several new team members.
Its been a great year for me and I’m hoping to be able to announce at least one new sponsor soon for next which I am quite excited about and I’m looking to raise funds to race in the GT Cup as well next season.
If you have a few grand burning a hole in your bank balance you could do a lot worse than investing it in my racing next season. Keep an eye on next week’s blog for the Birkett report.
Luv Gail
My dear friends,
I write this blog with a heavy heart as I head toBarcelona, as motorsport has lost a champion and I have lost a fellow racer and someone that I deeply admired and looked up to. Dan Wheldon was an inspiration to many on and off track and while he passed on doing what he loved, one can’t help but feel a sense of apprehension about this sport that we have all come to know and cherish. The past twenty-four hours have been a true eye-opener for me as the realization that motorsport is still dangerous and the drivers are not invincible becomes clear in the most tragic of circumstances. As we continue to push forward chasing perfection and continually finding the limits of speed and performance, the memory of Dan and his talent will shine through and while he is no longer with us, he will never be forgotten.
As I mentioned before, I am currently on the way to Barcelonafor what will be my second GP2 test of the year with Caterham Team Air Asia. The first test was also inSpain, albeit Southern, it proved to be a learning curve on the specialist Pirelli tires. As I rolled out on track, I had an idea of what to expect about the tires based oninformation I had gathered throughout the year. The driving style and car set-up required was different then anything I have previously driven; however, by the end of the day we managed to pull ourselves to P6 and after one day of working together, the team and I were very pleased with this result. Now we go toBarcelonawith a firm foundation looking to build on what we already learned and will be pushing to be at the top of the time sheets.
Now prior to the GP2 testing, I obviously had to finish out my campaign in World Series by Renault with Fortec and where I last left off, we had come off a challenging weekend in Silverstone. While we had managed a double podium, the latter of the two got stripped away due to a technical regulation that was later appealed and denied. So instead of entering Paul Ricard P3 in the championship, we entered in P6 with quite a gap to close down to the cars in front.
While this was a frustrating setback we knew that we would carry forward our strong pace into the event and this became clear during Saturday morning qualifying. We spent all of Friday finding the perfect balance instead of proving ultimate lap time and it proved to be a good strategy. We qualified P5 for the first race only 0.1 off the pace and we were able to do this with having to drive off on the quickest lap to avoid a much slower car. I was quite annoyed with the fact that we had missed out on pole because of such a silly reason, but such is motorsport and the task now was to drive on. I got a decent start and held my position into the first corner before quickly moving into fourth after getting around Hartley by the end of the first lap. I then set my sights on Robert when disaster struck. I suddenly felt as though the car was seriously damaged (i.e. flat tire, broken damper/suspension) as the performance dropped off about two seconds per lap. I quickly lost sight of the leaders as I fought tooth and nail to keep the rest of the field behind me. After 90% of the race this would prove to be futile as I slipped back to 17th and crossed the line with no improvement. It turned out them someone else’s front wing had literally gotten lodged underneath my car resulting in a 20% loss of overall downforce and increased drag.
This was very upsetting (and unbelievable that it never fell out the entire race) for the entire team as we knew that we had the pace for a podium and to say we were hell-bent on redemption for Sunday would was a bit of an understatement. We awoke Sunday morning to a very wet and cold Paul Ricard and this caught everyone a bit off guard as the “all-knowing” weather sites did not give any forewarning for such a change, but again this is motorsport and we quickly adapted as a team. We had a new approach to the wet set-up for the car and I was determined to fight back after the roller coaster ride that we all had been through. When the lights went green we immediately went to the top of the time sheets and remained there until three minutes to the end when JEV put in a phenomenal lap to put him on pole by 0.8. I could do nothing to respond and we ended the session P2, 0.7 clear of P4.
It finally felt as though a bit of momentum was coming our way and as it was a pit-stop race, we were ready to go to work. Our best start of the year came when the lights went out, however, I was not able to out-drag JEV going into Turn 1 and had to concede to following him round. What I neglected to mention was that rain started to fall in the second and third sectors on the circuit when we were doing our formation lap to the grid so when we reached the damp parts of the track it was a massive challenge to just keep the car pointing in the correct direction. The organizers called a full course yellow and this was a relief as it gave me an opportunity to test the grip of the track in a non-pressure environment. When the track went green again I immediately started to try and force the issue to take the lead as I knew that we were quicker and that we had the opportunity to break away if we could get clean air. As Ricciardo pitted from P3 when the pitstop window opened, we were put in a position to stop early as well to defend against his advances in clean air on fresher tires. However, this strategy got quickly dismissed when JEV pulled into the pits on the same lap that we were preparing to stop. I made a last minute decision to stay out in clean air and push for some qualifying laps even though my tires would not be as fresh as the cars that had already stopped. I had an amazing car underneath me and we not only were able to match the times of those behind, but set and reset the quickest lap so that when we pitted and rejoined with fresh rears, I had a 2.2 second lead on the two Red Bull cars behind.
Everything seemed to be going well until I got about 6 corners into my outlap when the alarms came on in the car and my water temperature soared 30 degrees above standard operating temperature. My heart sunk as I knew there was 12 laps left and I immediately went into engine conservation mode the only way I know how – short shifting. I was shifting 1,200 rpms early on the upshift and saving the downshifts for very late into the braking zone in order to keep any and all stress out of the engine as possible. Somehow the engine held on and we crossed the line with the same 2.2 second gap on the cars behind and the relief exceeded the joy on everyone’s face. It was a challenging race with changing strategies and varying weather conditions, but we stood on the top step of the podium again and that is what we wake up each day pushing and striving for.
With the weekend finished and our championship revived moving back into P4, narrowly behind P3, I got on a plane to Signapore for the only night race on the Formula One calendar and the focus of the weekend was to observe and learn as much as possible working directly with Team Lotus and their drivers. This was one of the most enjoyable weekends I have had and I was thrilled with the opportunities presented to me while I was there. I even had the chance to walk in the legendary Amber Lounge fashion show on Saturday night. I was able to demonstrate a Zoolander Blue Steel attempt, which was far from perfect, but great fun to be with the other reserve drivers back stage panicking about how and where to walk and what classified as a “pose.”
After Singapore and my time with Team Lotus the focus became the season finale in Barcelona. The best that we could achieve in terms of the championship was third, so this is what we set out to do… no matter what it would take. When Friday came to a close we realized that we did not have the balance, nor pace that we had come to expect from the previous rounds and going into Saturday morning, we knew that anything less than maximum attack was not going to be good enough. The first qualifying session was severely interrupted with a red flag followed by a 30-minute delay because of an oil spill through the second and longest sector on the track. At this point of the second red flag, I was sitting P14 as I never had the opportunity to put a complete lap together due to traffic and tire warm up procedure, so I was quite disappointed that we would not be able to improve our time based on the condition of the circuit. When the session resumed, we held back in pit lane for a bit waiting to see how the laptimes would reflect the condition of the track and it was quite discouraging to see that no one was improving. Without much choice, we bolted the second set of tires on and I went for one final go to try and gain at least a bit to get us into the top 10 and a points scoring position. The lap that would ensue was without question a good one and I improved 0.7 to go P3 overall when the checkered flag flew. It was one of those laps where you know that it is messy, but if you can hold it together, then its guaranteed to be quick and fortunately I was able to hold on, albeit went two wheels in the gravel on the fastest corner on the track when I hit the oil dry. Whew!
My chief championship competitor for the weekend was Albert Costa and as he starting P2, I was quite content to bring the car home on the podium and not take any unnecessary risks as we knew that the ultimate pace was missing a bit. Off the line, I immediately had a run on Albert and tried to go round the outside of him into turn one which resulted in me getting pushed slightly wide for turn two, which then saw me wide for turn three and a chain reaction that caused me to go from the offensive to the very defensive in order to not lose too many positions to my main points rival. Unfortunately, while defending I flat spotted my tires to an extreme, which plagued me later on in the race. Despite my best efforts and damaged tires I could not keep pace with Vergne behind me and I slipped back into P4 where we finished. While it was not an amazing result, it was solid points going into the final race of the season.
My championship position was as follows: if Albert won the race, then I would have to finish no worse then 10th to clinch third overall. If Albert did not win, then it would not matter where I finished to still clinch third.
This seemed like fairly good odds to me as we arrived at the track on Sunday morning, but after qualifying which saw Albert on pole and me in P7 by nearly a second, I did think about the potential outcomes. This was soon a mute point as there was a massive shunt with the two championship contenders at the start. Obviously a safety car was immediately brought out and when I crossed start finish I saw that I was in P9. When the track went green again, we pitted immediately and unfortunately the timing was not to our advantage as it had been in the past and I came out behind another car, which did not allow me to maximize the fresh tires to the extent that we have become so good at this year.
However, the team still did a brilliant job at getting the car out quicker than most and I was able to gain one spot when the sequences all sorted themselves out to P8. I was closing down on the car in front of me and immediately started to look for a way past. After a few laps of pressure, I was able to slip by entering turn four for seventh place and that is where I would cross the line. This was a less than superb result, but allowed me to score third overall and rookie of the year, all the while giving Fortec Motorsport a second place in the team’s championship.
Not unlike any other year in motorsports, this one had moments of great success and bitter disappointment. Through it all everyone has continued by my side, pushing me forward with your support and encouragement. 2011 was another great year for me, racing in Europe and opened many doors in Formula One and my relationship with Team Lotus. I extend a big thank you to my personal investors and sponsors who have stayed committed and my friends and family who continue to motivate and inspire me to never give up and keep on fighting. I owe the results of this year to GOD who has given me the strength to believe in the big picture and for keeping me on the straight and narrow.
As this blog comes to a close, we need to realize that motorsport and life in general is entirely unpredictable and it is important that we don’t get caught up in the small hiccups, but continue to realize that there is a plan beyond all of our understanding already in place. Dan’s life and death has inspired me to fight for what I love and believe in and never give up on my dreams because you never know when your time will come.
I look forward to moving forward with you all and can’t wait to see what is in store. Never stop pushing. Let it ride.
My Best,
Alexander