Sam Bird's first F3 Euroseries event turned out to be a true test of his racing skills and mental fortitude, but the Manor Motorsport driver rose to the challenge with a scoring display in Sunday's second race.
Having topped the timesheets in pre-season testing, Bird was in buoyant mood heading to Hockenheim, but a combination of appalling weather conditions and errors of judgement from others contrived to make his task harder than expected.
Practice was held in torrential rain, with so much water falling that Friday's scheduled qualifying session had to be postponed until Saturday morning. The track was still wet, but drying out, by the time the session came around, and everyone knew that their best lap would come at the very end of the session. Bird was prepared and ready to make his move as the chequered flag was readied, only for 'a muffin on slicks' - to quote a respected journalist - to appear out of the pits and baulk him to the tune of two full seconds.
Once past the floundering car, Bird posted quick times in the second and third sectors of the lap, but could not overcome the deficit and ended up 23rd on the grid. To make matters worse, official track timing showed that a first sector time from any of his previous four laps would have helped put him fifth on the competitive grid....
Never one to shy away from a challenge, however, Bird profited from a few retirements in race one, but also passed eight cars on the track to eventually take the flag in tenth position and give himself a chance of points in Sunday's second race.
With the reverse grid format, I was desperately trying to get up to eighth, he said, aware that that would have yielded pole for race two, "However, with the safety car period, and being stuck behind a slower car which managed to make itself very wide, I didn't have time to make up those extra two places. I feel I could have done it in different circumstances.
![Sam Bird - Manor Motorsport Dallara-Mercedes [pic credit: Clement Marin]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/429329.jpg)
