Sam MacLeod will be making the step up to the FIA European Formula 3 Championship in 2015 after signing with the German-based Motopark team.
The twenty-year-old Scottish driver will join fellow German Formula 3 graduates Markus Pommer and Nabil Jeffri, along with karting star Sergio Sette Camara and Italian Formula 4 racer Mahaveer Raghunathan in the team’s debut season in the Euro F3 series.
Speaking to The Checkered Flag ahead of the start of the season, MacLeod reveals he got into motorsport “through a mixture of the usual karting coupled with a family history of racing in other categories which resulted in a gradual escalation to where I am today.”
He competed in Formula 3 in both German (full-time) and Britain (part-time) in 2014, having moved up from the British based Formula Renault Protyre Championship in 2013 where he ended up as top rookie.
Last year in German Formula 3, as a Van Amersfoort Racing driver, MacLeod took three race victories and finished fourth in the championship, and believed moving to Motopark, against whom he fought against in the championship last year was the logical decision for him and his career.
He admitted how impressed he has been with the set-up at the German team, and has been preparing himself for the challenge ahead of him in 2015.
“On the back of the challenges that I gave them last year in the ATS [German] F3 Cup a mutual respect was formed and it was only logical for us to progress together,” insisted MacLeod. “Their attention to detail and the crazy shifts they put in to try and get everything perfect [is impressive].
”We have been doing a lot of simulator work at the factory to ensure we maximise our time at the track as well as the obvious physical and mental preparation.”
When asked what he was looking forward to in the coming season, the Briton was eager to face the two stand out street track events of the year around the legendary Pau in France and the equally legendary Macau in China.
“The highlights are obviously the two Grand Prixs in Pau and Macau,” said MacLeod, despite admitting that 2014 at Macau was “the worst weekend of my life” after numerous problems with his TOM’s machine. He ended up twentieth in the main race, nearly two minutes adrift of Felix Rosenqvist.
MacLeod had a trouble pre-season test at Valencia last month, and heads into the season not really knowing what to expect, saying: “Given our preseason it’s hard to have a clear picture.”
If his European F3 campaign is anything like his German F3 season last year, he should be a contender.
