Pietro Fittipaldi continued his winning start to the 2017 World Series Formula V8 3.5 championship with another dominant display in race two at Silverstone on Sunday.
The Brazilian converted his second pole position into a second win, and praised his Lotus team for giving him a great car all weekend, with the Czech-based team having won the last four races at Silverstone having seen Roy Nissany win twice last year.
“It was really good, I’m really excited,” said Fittipaldi to The Checkered Flag. “The team did a great job, we got two pole positions, two wins.
“I’m actually here with Fernando Plata, a driver coach and a good mentor. But basically we have two wins, got good start and a good lead.”
It was not all plain-sailing for Fittipaldi however, with a mid-race safety car bunching the field up behind him again, but he was able to control the restart ahead of Egor Orudzhev and streak to victory.
“Obviously when the safety car went out I was a bit, ‘it could have been a bit easier than this’ but the plan then was to just open up in the first two laps to really get a good lead from Egor, and then just control from there,” said Fittipaldi.
“The front tyres were really going off, but we were able to control it and get the win. I’m really happy.”
Fittipaldi revealed that although his starts looked good, it was more down to others having worse starts than himself rather than anything special, mainly down to the grip levels on the International Pit Straight, which the series were using for the first time this year after previously being housed in the National Pits.
“We made really good starts, actually they weren’t that good but I think the other guys had worse starts,” said Fittipaldi. “I also think it was because it wasn’t very high grip, the surface here this weekend.”
Fittipaldi now heads to Spa-Francorchamps for the second round of the championship with a twenty-four-point advantage over Alfonso Celis Jr, and is aiming to continue his winning run at the Belgian track at the beginning of May.
“I’m now hoping to get a good race at Spa,” said Fittipaldi. “[I want to] do a good job and again try and win the races.”
