After the final race of the BRDC British F3 weekend, TCF caught up with Ben Hingeley. The HHC Motorsport driver had held on to third as the flag came out, recording his first podium of the season.
Hingeley himself had started the weekend with strong pace. After a personal best qualifying of the season, he finished the first race in fourth place. The result boosted his championship position, though he couldn’t maintain it for race two.
He came into the pits with an engine issue before the start of race two, though he would later leave the pits, recording the fastest lap. Usually this would be enough to give him pole, but would instead start the final race from third. Despite this, he held on to claim his first podium of the year.
“Yeah, it took a bit longer than I thought, but I finally got it all together so it’s great.”
As the race continued, Hingeley kept up with Matheus Leist. When they reached its halfway stage though, he fell back into the clutches of his team-mate, Harrison Scott. Talking about the threat behind, he said;
“I got quite concerned about them at one point. Though I thought I’d have it a bit more my own way after I started to pull away quite a bit. I started to go with Leist a little bit, but unfortunately, I just didn’t have the speed of those two today.”
“They’ve been unbeatable all weekend, but I’ve been at the top in the third / fourth place all this time. Thanks to this, I managed to hang on, which is the main thing.”
As Hingeley prepares for Donington, he’ll hope to maintain his strong form. A mediocre season has meant that he can’t fight for the title, but a strong conclusion may put him in good stead for 2017.
“Well, I’ve got to do the best I can with the results. A couple of fifth places, maybe a podium, you never know. I wasn’t expecting to be in the top five this weekend after the results we’ve had. Everything just came together and next round at Donington, we can do the same.”
“Nothings concrete.” he said talking about his plans for next year. “The results haven’t come our way so far, so hopefully this’ll give us a massive boost.”
