Image: fiaformula3.com
Today started wet, and just got wetter!
Both sessions were completely wet which gave me a fantastic opportunity to gain miles in a new car in these extreme conditions. It is not often you get these conditions and the chance to exploit them, so that from the beginning was the aim for the day.
It also gave myself and my engineer Pol the chance to continue to progress the areas I was working on during the wet session on the first day.
All of this went really well, and I continued to gain in confidence with the car in the wet and was well within a second of current FIA F3 drivers in the 2019 Championship which at this stage, with the track as wet as this, is right on target.
The last hour of the afternoon session became quite crazy. With some standing water on parts of the circuit, we had 6 red flags in 45 mins! No sooner would we head out, we would come straight back in. With 10 mins to go the rain finally stopped and on my second last lap I was able to improve my time.
At the start of my final lap, there was a yellow flag at turn 2 so I backed off. Many set their fastest lap on this lap, so perhaps they had passed the yellow flag before it came out.
This 3 days has been an unbelievable experience. The car is a huge step up, much more power, more downforce and more management needed with the tyre. Managing traffic was a huge factor too with 30 cars on track and such disparity in speed between those on a flying lap, and those on a cool down lap. All really exciting challenges though, and it was really good to start to become really comfortable with the car over the 3 days.
The morning session yesterday really was the one good dry session I had to be aggressive and see what I can do at this level, and I was really pleased with that session to be where I was and to still know that I have much further to gain with experience.
Thank you to Andreas, Pol, Fernando, Eduard and all of the team at Jenzer Motorsport. The car was amazing, and I have learned so much over the past week with you all.
Thank you as always to all my amazing sponsors Lazersafe, High Energy Service, Online Logistics Solutions, The Wealth Designers, Edith Cowan University, Grand Toyota, Fullworks Firesafety, Inspired Insurance Services, Signarama, Rvend, Walker Wayland, F45 Hillary’s and Trizone.
Finally, thank you to Dale Alcock and my team of Investors behind my racing that give me this incredible opportunity to pursue my ambitions. I am so grateful and I am taking every chance I get to maximise each step.
Now a bit of a break, but looking forward to updating all on the 2020 program soon.
