On the back of the Ultimate Motorsport’s debut outing in the 2007 British F3 International Series at Oulton Park, former F3 Euroseries ace Esteban Guerrieri gives us his initial impressions of both the team and championship, and looks ahead to round two at Donington Park next weekend…
I was very happy with the work the team did at
Oulton Park. It was the first race weekend together for everybody – there was a lot of emotion involved but they all controlled it very well. I wasn’t happy with the speed of the car, but I was happy with what we achieved over the weekend. It was my first experience of British F3, and the level of drivers is very good – I think British F3 and the Euroseries are the two top F3 championships.
Admittedly we were further away from the pace than we had thought we would be. The car particularly lacked speed in the fast corners, but the behaviour of the chassis isn’t at all bad. I enjoy driving it. We just need more mechanical grip and aerodynamic developments to make it faster through the corners.
What made it worse was that Oulton is a long circuit with a lot of corners, so I don’t think the gap was quite so big under the circumstances. On the results sheet I think we looked ok, but we do need to do some catching up in terms of speed. We worked on improving the car during each session. In the first one we were more than three seconds away from the pace, but by the end of the weekend we were just over two seconds off.
I also met my team-mate Michael Devaney for the first time on the Friday morning before the race. He’s an excellent guy. He is very quick and calm under pressure on-track, and we are working together very well. Having two cars in the team is the best way to develop things.
Michael was very unlucky over the weekend – he had a lot of problems with the gearbox, and I had some issues with the brakes, but they were just normal things that we can solve in time for the next round.
