After race one and two, TCF caught up with the title contenders from the BRDC British F3 Championship. All were pleased with their result around the Snetterton 300 circuit as they looked towards the weekend ahead.
Race one winner Enaam Ahmed was ecstatic after a strong start saw him run away from the pack. After building up a gap of two seconds in the opening lap, he never seemed pressured, winning by a similar margin.
“It’s not too bad really, it’s much more straight forward to control the gap around here. I tried to set fastest lap as well, but Dan had four new tyres so we’ll see what happens going into tomorrow. It’s going to be very tight, because all three of us are so close on time.” Ahmed said.
After Friday Ahmed had been off the pace, but when the time came, the Londoner performed as expected. Asking if he’d done anything different, he commented;
“No, no, I just kept my head down and chipped away at it, I always knew I had the pace. I was just focusing on doing little things in the practice, I wasn’t really bothered about the leaderboard and focus on the result today.”
Chasing him home had been Joey Mawson. The Australian, who became the ADAC Formula 4 champion this season, had only jumped into the car on Thursday, but immediately made an impact. When asked if he could have done anything about Ahmed’s, lightning start, he said;
“Yeah, but in fairness, he had built such a large gap in the first few laps, so in a 12 lap race, it’s really difficult, unless you’re really dominate, to catch a gap like that. I just tried my best to set a good lap to determine the position for race two.” he started second.
“I think he was just superior, because I pulled away from the guy behind me, but Ahmed was so much quicker than me. So I’m not sure what it was really. It just became clear he was dominant in the opening laps.”
Looking at the weekend ahead he replied, saying, “I can keep working away, trying to get good points and we’ll see where we end up at the end of the weekend.”
Race two threw up the same top three, though it was Dan Ticktum who found himself on top in this encounter. While he had made a poor start in race one, the Double R Racing driver was immediately back up to speed and started on pole in race two
Talking about his race one start Ticktum said; “In the last one, I just held the clutch on for far too long, didn’t really read the biting point of the car too well. To be fair, I’ve only done one practice start in this car and my first in well over a year. That didn’t help, but I thought about it over lunch and knew what I needed to do, focusing on the start. I had to focus on the whole of the race.”
While he has been out of racing for most of the season, he did recently return after a one-off round in the European Formula 3 Championship at Hockenheim. He commented on how different the cars were in terms of performance and handling.
“While they’re both called F3, they are massively different. I think for this championship the car is brilliant, it’s about a fifth of the price of Euro F3 which is ridiculous. Saying that, in Euro F3, the brakes are better and there’s much more downforce, so the car itself does feel better, but that’s what we expect to be honest. So for what we have in the UK, I think it’s a great car and I enjoy driving it.”
The BRDC F3 Autumn Trophy continues tomorrow at 9:30 local time with Sunday Qualifying.