In the team’s latest exclusive column for Crash.net, Ultimate Motorsport ace Esteban Guerrieri looks back over the outfit’s maiden season in motorsport, from battling simply to get on the grid six months ago to fighting for podium finishes by the end of the campaign...
It has been quite a ride with Ultimate Motorsport this season. We have had some great times, and some not-so-good times, but we have come a long way – and, I’m pleased to say, all in the right direction. We so, so nearly got a podium in the last race at Rockingham and we really deserved to. It would have been a great end to the season, but in the end it wasn’t to be.
First qualifying at Rockingham didn’t go well at all for me. The conditions were mixed, which is normally very good for us, so it was a good opportunity and I think we could have got onto the first three rows – we had proved that in free practice. Unfortunately I had a collision with Sebastian Hohenthal, which caused me to spin and get stuck in the gravel trap. It was absolutely my fault; I was fighting with Hohenthal to see which one of us would get a clear track, but I made a mistake which wasn’t acceptable.
I was upset with myself more than anything – the first thing you must do in the car is think, and in these situations the most important thing obviously is to complete your last lap, because the track was getting drier and drier, but I wasn’t on track for the last eight minutes. It was just a stupid error on my part.
The second qualifying session was dry, and to be honest I didn’t expect to be that competitive in the dry. I thought top ten would be good, so I was very happy with seventh. It didn’t make up for what had happened earlier on, but it was a good position from where to fight for a podium. Unfortunately because of the mistake in first qualifying, though, we had only one opportunity to do that rather than two.
