Menasheh Idafar ended the first official test for this year's British F3 International Series satisfied with his performance, and improvement, over the two days of running at the Rockingham circuit.
Starting his first season in the premier class of the championship last season's National Class champion ended the second day of running with a best time of 1:11.557, just over 0.9 seconds adrift of Carlin driver Felipe Nasr who topped the timesheets on both days of testing at the Northants track.
The morning of the second left Menasheh, driving a VW-powered Dallara for T-Sport, and the rest of the gathered F3 paddock somewhat frustrated with red flags interrupting the running on several occasions. The time lost limited Idafar to a best lap of 1:12.357, good enough for the 11th fastest.
After a slow start to the afternoon session the 19-year-old ended the day by cleaving a significant portion of time from his best lap, turning a lap at an average speed of 97.57mph on his final run.
“Today wasn't exactly what we had hoped for,” said Idafar, “in the morning I just didn't get a clear run at all so we weren't as quick as we should have been. Thankfully in the afternoon we did manage to get some better laps in so, in the end, we were pretty competitive.”
Idafar's next outing in the car will be next week – March 8-9 – at Silverstone.
