Norisring: Laurens Vanthoor event summary

Difficult weekend for Vanthoor

Norisring - 04/07/10 - The fourth meeting of the F3 EuroSeries took place this weekend on the German street circuit in Nurnberg. In the second race on the legendary Norisring the young Laurens Vanthoor scored a fifth place, following a highly difficult first race earlier in the weekend. As the result of being penalised the young Belgian fell back into ninth spot, just out of the points. "This really got to me, because this seemed to be in line with what has already been happening earlier on this season and I needed some time to deal with it all. But on Sunday I gave it my all climbing up from the back up into fifth place, with some pretty keen lap times, which has given me the necessary confidence for the rest of the season."

In the qualifying sessions Vanthoor finished in fifth place, "which was pretty reasonable, even though I had expected a somewhat better outcome. However I must admit that this circuit is far more difficult than I had initially foreseen. It looks simple, but it definitely isn't."

The turning point of up until then a reasonable weekend came about during the first race, "at a given moment and under yellow flag conditions I clocked up a fastest sector time, I was really into a good race, and for that I was penalised with a Drive Through. I still tried to make up a few places but amongst other things a Safety Car procedure put the final spanner in the works. I was extremely disappointed, but during the course of the evening I made a mental click and decided to purely focus on the second race".

And on Sunday Vanthoor drove a strong race taking the chequered flag in fifth place. "Having cut my way through the mid field the gap with the top-3 was just too big to achieve anything better. However apart from scoring a fifth place I'm delighted with my good lap times, pretty constant and that is important. I will obviously need to approach the rest of the championship in another frame of mind and as from now look on it as a race per race situation.

"Following a short holiday break we'll start preparing for the next race on the Nurburgring, taking place on 7th and 8th August."

-source: laurensvanthoor.be