I got a good start again in race two and moved up to seventh, and luckily two of the guys ahead of me had to come in for drive-through penalties for jumping the start. I then hounded Niall Breen up until lap 18 when I pressurised him into a mistake and managed to get past him for fourth. Our race pace was very good, particularly compared to teams like Carlin and Double R who have so much more experience than we do. I think our form has surprised them more than it surprised us, given where we started with the car back at the start of the season and where we are now.
There’s been a lot of hard work gone into that by everyone, from the mechanics and engineers to the team management and drivers – I’ve been extremely impressed. This is Ultimate’s first season, and to come in with a car that’s never been raced before was a difficult task. The team has coped with that very well and are getting better all the time.
We are all learning but we seem to be one of the best teams in the paddock now, and we are consistently going from strength-to-strength. We are down to the last half second which is always the toughest part to find, but everyone is working very hard to achieve that.
There’s a real family atmosphere within the team too which is important – everyone gets on well with each other and Esteban and I work well together, live together and pretty much do everything together at the moment! He is a handy driver and it’s great that we push each other so hard. We’ve both got a lot of experience in F3 and I think that shows – we seem to be within two or three tenths of each other no matter where we go or what session it is.
It’s good that we are so close, because this isn’t like a normal season where we would be racing against each other. We need to work together to improve the car and take the fight to the leading teams. Everyone at Ultimate is pushing each other along.
