Protyre Formula Renault BARC Championship rookie Zaamin Jaffer suffered his fair share of bad luck during Rounds Seven and Eight of the 2011 season at Croft, but the Hillspeed driver still managed to emerge in seventh position in the championship standings.
The 21 year old suffered his first problems during the unofficial timed testing, with gearbox problems hampering his preparations for the weekend. The Indian racer's misfortune continued in qualifying when he was badly baulked by another driver, the ensuing contact leading to one of his tyres to come off the rim. This meant the Dubai racer had to run on three new tyres and one used tyre, leaving him twelfth and sixteenth on the grid for the two races.
Just when Zaamin had hoped his run of bad luck was over, more problems arose on the green flag formation lap ahead of the opening race, when an electrical glitch caused his engine to cut-out at the penultimate corner.
By the time they got the car fired up again, the race had begun and Jaffer was left almost half a lap behind. Running well he caught onto the rear of the field and worked his way to a thirteenth place finish. The weekend's second race proved largely uneventful for the Active PR-backed driver, with overtaking at a premium, he was unable to work his way any higher than fourteenth position.
Jaffer reflected: “Whatever could go wrong this weekend did. The trouble started in testing straight away in the morning, we had gearbox problems and then in qualifying the tyre came off the rim so I was already on the back-foot then with three new tyres compared to everyone else being on four.
“We struggled through the left-handers because of the old tyre we had to run but we did manage to salvage 12th in the first qualifying, which wasn't bad. On the green flag lap though before the race, the engine cut-out and I was well behind when I finally got going with everyone else already halfway around the first lap.
“In race two our fate was decided from the start really, beginning in 16th place. I didn't expect much, we got a couple of places but then got stuck at the end of a queue of five cars. We really need to give it our all in the final two events and try and get onto that podium.”
