Ultimately, this is my favourite circuit of all time, nothing else comes close to it. I love the high-speed corners and the rapid chicanes. After my win at Rockingham I was looking forward to getting in another here.
The practice sessions were wet and dry – this made knowing your time in relation to others tricky on an ever-changing track. I went into qualifying not knowing fully how much pace I had but it became apparent that there certainly was a lot of pace in the Fortec car. I managed to get into third for the third race and sixth for the first. A decent result, but I knew there was more pace available.
The start to the first race was pretty tricky. I managed to get far too much wheel spin which did not help me into the first corner. I got into fifth place early on after battling hard but, after struggling with the car as it had very little rear-end grip, I lost the place to put me back in sixth – where I finished.
I started on the front row for the second race due to the reversed grid. I had another average start which put me into third straight away where I had to fend off James Calardo for five laps. Doing so, I secured a nice podium finish, behind Jean Eric Vergne and Felipe Nasr. A decent result as the car was really quite poor on traction and I was struggling with the balance.
In the final race I started from third place after a decent qualifying, directly behind my team mate Oli Webb. I made sure my tyres were very warm and sticky after getting far too much wheel spin in the last couple of races. The problem was that the track temperature had risen leaving me with four tyres practically glued to the tarmac. I didn’t think enough about the situation I was in and managed to stall on the grid. I was pretty annoyed, to say the least, but made a very good recovery drive coming back from 26th on the grid to 10th overall and eighth in the international class. The drive was very precise and aggressive in getting past many cars, and I learned a valuable lesson about starts.
The whole weekend was half-decent but could have been a lot more successful. I now need to make good use of a strong car and get some wins. My next race is at my home circuit of Thruxton, where I hope to make a good opportunity stick.
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