Will Bratt showed promise during the opening rounds of the 2010 FIA Formula Two Championship at Silverstone, Northamptonshire.
Bratt, the reigning Euroseries 3000 Champion and who raced in the GP2 Asia Series before joining the F2 grid, delivered an extremely competitive performance at Silverstone to sit fifth in the Championship.
Qualifying on the Saturday saw the Oxfordshire racer secure sixth on the grid for race one, having set a best time of 1:37.390 (190.03 km/h) while the second qualifying session saw the twenty two year old set the seventh fastest time of the session, a 1:37.439 – a time which was within four tenths of a second of the pole position time.
The opening race of the season, held Sunday morning saw the British Racing Drivers Club Rising Star held sixth position off the line and took fifth position going through the fast sequence of corners at Becketts as young Danish racer Johan Jokinen ran wide. Further into the race, experienced Lithuanian racer Kazim Vasiliauskas passed Bratt with a surprise move at Vale. Bratt would remain in sixth until the chequered flag at the end of lap twenty three.
Having set his personal fastest lap on lap eighteen with a 1:39.484, the British racer finished within a second of the Lithuanian racer.
The second race saw Bratt defending his seventh place from Russian Sergey Afanasiev, and once he successfully broke the challenge of the Russian, he set about challenging the young Danish racer Jokinen.
In the space of two laps, Bratt went from seventh to fifth, taking advantage of Tom Gladdis spinning off and fellow F2 debutant Dean Stoneman retiring. Bratt remained in fifth until the end and finished just under a second behind Jack Clarke and with a fastest lap of 1:39.353.
Both the weekends races were fairly uneventful for Bratt, but he was able to lap within half a second of the outright pace during the two races and his pace impressed, even more so during the latter stages of the races when tyre wear became a factor for the Banbury based star. The weekends two races produced a points haul of eighteen for Bratt, and fifth position in the Championship.
Speaking about his debut, Bratt said: “I'm fairly pleased with the start we've made to the championship, there's still a lot more to come but two top six finishes is a decent way to kick-off the season, Obviously I'd have liked to have challenged for the podium but we weren't all that far away. We hadn't had much time in the car at all before this weekend so, all in all, I'm reasonably satisfied with the results.”
The next rounds of the 2010 FIA Formula two Championship support the FIA World Touring Car Championship at the Marrakech street circuit in Morocco over the weekend of the 1st and 2nd May. There will be a special F2 street parade on Thursday 29 April.
