Enaam Ahmed ended Saturday on his roof after flipping the car in race one. It was the Douglas Motorsport driver’s second retirement of the season and will be useful for him to find clear air in the second BRDC British F3 race.
“The car held up quite well, I’m not too bad.” Ahmed stated.
The 16-year-old went into the first lap hoping to make up places after a poor qualifying left him ninth. Ahmed made a promising getaway and was up to seventh challenging his teammate as they went along the Bentley Straight. He got to the outside of Thomas Randle and the two touched going into Brundle.
“I passed Tom the corner before then he got a run on me down the straight, getting up the inside. I braked in front of him and got to the outside, we just touched wheels. I spun the car and dug it into the grass which flipped me.”
It was at this point Ricky Collard came over to console his comrade. The two seemed upbeat and joked with each other. As the race leader, Collard hadn’t seen the incident behind him and was pleased to hear Ahmed will be back for race two.
Ahmed said: “I know I’ve been warned in the briefing, they’ve been telling us not to do any more crashing and another driver rolls it.
“It was a racing incident, I respect what the stewards said. Tom and I were racing for fifth, we were millimetres apart, it happens. That wasn’t the thing that rolled it though, it only did that when I dug into the grass really.”
Despite the issues, Ahmed knows he can still salvage a decent result from this weekend. With little challenge from any driver behind him in the series and his opportunity to catch the front-runners fading, it’ll be about enjoying the remaining rounds for the Brit: “I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. I’ve saved four new tyres for the next race, so I’ll start at the back of the grid and probably hold back so I can set fastest laps.”
