A mixed weekend sees Ollie Pidgley leave with his first top ten of the year at Knockhill, at a circuit he’s never visited before, after a season that has seen little overall success for the MSA Formula driver.
The weekend had started rough for Pidgley, spinning twice during the Friday practice sessions. Things didn’t get much better after he once again found himself beached during the qualifying session, briefly leading to a red flag in a heavily interrupted session.
Despite his poor grid position, the Richardson Racing driver drove a smooth first race to take a then-season best of thirteenth, before using this to promote himself to tenth in the second race.
“It’s great to have been in the top 10 for the first time and three more finishes in the points is what we were aiming for”, said Ollie, who celebrated his 18th birthday on Tuesday.
“Being a 50 second lap, Knockhill might look easy but the undulation is really challenging and it’s quite a difficult circuit to get to grips with. We needed maximum track time, so weren’t helped by a clutch problem in testing, but overall it was a strong weekend.”
“There was a lot of carnage in race two, I got a decent start and I moved up into about 11th place but when Lando [Norris] got spun out and he was in the middle of the road, I lost two places avoiding him but we still finished in 10th in the end which was great. Race three was another good result and showed we definitely made some positive progress this weekend.”
Team mate Louise Richardson would also find herself benefiting from the on track mayhem in the later races, but will rue her lost opportunity when, in the opening event, she was running eighth before collision with another rival sent her back down to fifteenth. The result would have landed her reverse grid pole.
“It’s been a bit of an up and down weekend, and the results don’t really reflect the pace in the car,” she said. “The first race was going well and we looked on for a top eight finish until the incident and then in race two, we were in the wrong place at the wrong time when it kicked off ahead.”