The four-year-old outright lap record at the Adelaide Street circuit could well be smashed next weekend as the 2008 Kumho Tyres Australian Formula 3 Championship heads to the Clipsal 500 for the latest round of the season.
Leading racers in the series head to Adelaide confident that the series' new 2007-specification cars will significantly undercut the existing outright lap record set by Formula 3 competitor Ian Dyk on the series' last visit to the streets of Adelaide in 2004. He set the outright lap record at 1m 19.4959s in March that year. By comparison, the V8 Supercar lap record was set last year by James Courtney, at 1m22.4348 some three seconds slower.
F3 machinery is now the quickest racing on Australian circuits, with the cars already lapping some seven seconds quicker than V8 Supercars at Phillip Island, where a
MotoGP bike is also three seconds slower than an F3 machine.
In preseason testing [at Eastern Creek] the new cars were two seconds faster than the old lap record, Opes Prime Team BRM's James Winslow explained. We couldn't lower the mark during the race meeting due to the weather and the rubber laid down by the A1GP cars but Adelaide should be a different subject.
The new cars additional grip and aerodynamic stability should make it very potent on the street circuit especially through the 90-degree corners and, of course, turn eight which will be mega in these cars. A 2001-car set the lap record in 2004 and the new chassis are two generations more advanced than that, so I'm expecting us to set a scorching pace next week.
Winslow has experience on street circuits having contested the famous Macau Grand Prix in 2006 and he admitted he couldn't wait to race on the Adelaide venue that previously played host to the Australian GP.
I've never driven the Adelaide circuit but the track looks excellent, he said. It's a famous track thanks to its history in
F1 so it will be great to drive there.
![Australian F3 race action [Pic credit: Klynsmith/Race Torque]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/405868.jpg)
