Racing Engineering Spanish F3 Jerez race notes

Racing Engineering's Ricardo Mauricio is the great winner of the sixth round of the 2003 Spanish F3 Championship taking place this weekend at the Circuito de Jerez. Starting from pole position and marking the fastest lap time in the race, Ricardo celebrated a deserved start-to-finish victory in a race that has seen many incidents.

His teammate Juan Antonio Del Pino finished the race eighth. Racing Engineering is leading the drivers as well as the team championship.

Race:

Ricardo Mauricio went into the race from pole position and for the frontrunner the race was rather unspectacular. Never having been in any real danger of not making the maximum points in the race, Ricardo had Soucek, who ran in second, under control during the whole race. Ricardo marked the fastest lap in the race and scored the maximum points possible this weekend. These very important points allowed Ricardo to take over the lead in the drivers championship and are a very vital step towards the title.

The young Andalusian Juan Antonio Del Pino, starting the race fourth, had to come into the pits during the first lap since a starting incident with another driver has caused a broken rim. Racing Engineering's crew changed the wheel on Juan Antonio's car and he rejoined the race thirteenth. By lap 11 Juan Antonio was already in fifth position again and put a lot of pressure on Barba. In the last corner of lap eleven, Juan Antonio attempted to overtake Barba, a driver with whom other Racing Engineering drivers didn't have the best on-track experience as well, and spun when being hit by his opponent's car.

The other two Racing Engineering drivers look back to an eventful race. Racing Engineering's Pedro Barral, together with Serafim and Risatti, were involved in a start accident that caused all three drivers to retire before even reaching the start-finish-line!

Lourenco Da Veiga, starting from ninth position, was right behind Barba in lap four, but when the Spaniard spun, and Lourenco didn't have any other choice but go off the track in order to avoid a crash.

After the Sunday race Alfonso de Orleans, president, stated, "It was a crazy weekend. Ricardo did really well. I am sure the other drivers would have also had a good result, but due to some careless maneuvers by some of the more inexperienced drivers, it was not to be so."

-www.racing-engineering.com