BF3
Donington: Rodolfo Gonzalez racr report
Gonzalez battles back into top 6 at Donington Park Venezuelan Rodolfo Gonzalez was back in action in British F3, last weekend, at Donington Park, and managed to get a top 6 finish in the 2nd race of he weekend. After driving through back pain at ...
Edited: Apr 24, 2007, 5:13 PM
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Gonzalez battles back into top 6 at Donington Park
Venezuelan Rodolfo Gonzalez was back in action in British F3, last weekend, at Donington Park, and managed to get a top 6 finish in the 2nd race of he weekend.
After driving through back pain at the previous race meeting at Oulton Park (which hurt every time he braked hard) Gonzalez wanted to try and maximise his opportunities against his rivals. Especially as he was the front running Mugen-Honda powered runner with most of his main rivals using a Mercedes-Benz engine.
The Saturday qualifying sessions didn't go as well as hoped with only 12th & 13th places on the grid of 31 racers. Gonzalez was looking on the bright side as he had made up places off the line at Oulton Park and would need to do so again.
On Sunday Gonzalez was again determined to get good starts to both races to get in the battle for the front places. With Donington Park being based on a very undulating track there are a couple of key overtaking places, but the easiest way is always off the grid.
In race 1 Gonzalez, as in the previous round at Oulton Park, got a good start and made up several places and was running strongly as part of a 7 car battle, but try as he might he couldn't find a way past, and when Breen spun at the chicane lost ground towards the end.
In Race 2 he made an even better start, and with mayhem at the Old Hairpin, managed to find himself in 6th place at the end of he first lap. When one of his rivals made a mistake that became 5th place, and without problems with back markers, late into the race, he would have held that position, but a 6th place finish was the highest position to date this season.
He just needs to improve his qualifying to be able to aim even higher, and will be closely working with his T-Sport engineers to sort out.
As Gonzalez said after the races "I think we struggled for pace in qualifying, but the race was a lot better for me, had it not been for a faulty clutch at the start of race one, my performance would have been better. For race two I proved yet again that I'm capable enough to race the guys up front, I was 5th from p13 on the grid. But after problems overtaking a backmarker, who made me loose a lot of time, cost me 5th position, but I still finished 6th which still is a strong result. My pace in the race was a lot better though (than qualifying)"
The next British F3 races are in Bucharest (Romania) on May 20th.
-credit: rg/cr
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