Rene Binder secured his third visit to the podium in 2016 as the Austrian racer secured third place in the opening race of the Formula V8 3.5 weekend at Silverstone on Saturday.
The Lotus driver started seventh on the grid, and inherited a place at the start when Louis Deletraz stalled on the grid, but made good moves on both Aurélien Panis and Tom Dillmann to move into podium contention, and then grabbed the spot when Egor Orudzhev dropped out after a clash with Binder’s team-mate Roy Nissany.
“Really good day for us,” said Binder to The Checkered Flag. “It was not perfect in qualifying because yesterday we always 1 and 2 and qualifying I was P7, but the race went really well, we had a really strong pace.
“I managed to pass Dillmann and Panis but there was no DRS left for the last laps so I couldn’t pass [Matthieu] Vaxiviere but I could have been faster than him; the car was really good today.
“The track was really good today, the tyres stayed really well, its England, its not too hot its 25 degrees, the track was perfect today.”
Binder is hoping that he has a better qualifying performance for Sunday’s second race, and believes that he can follow team-mate Nissany to the top of the podium.
“I hope that I can improve a little bit in qualifying, maybe the luck will be on our side tomorrow,” said Binder.
“It was really close today so hope to be in the top three tomorrow because I know I can do a really good start and can also win the race.”
