Harrison Scott continued his excellent start to the 2017 EuroFormula Open season with a strong weekend around Spa-Francorchamps that saw him take second place during Saturday’s opening race and his third victory of the year on Sunday.
The RP Motorsport driver secured pole position on Saturday, but a few handling issues on his #10 machine meant he was forced to settle for second behind Carlin’s Ameya Vaidyanathan.
“It was another fantastic weekend,” said Scott. “Our pace was good straight out of the box and we felt confident that the car would be strong once again.
“Going in to qualifying on Saturday morning we had to be precise to get the pole and we were confident that we would have a good first race. I kept the lead and put in a couple of solid laps, but then I started fighting with the car’s handling and we couldn’t stay with Ameya through the second sector to make any meaningful moves after he took the lead.”
Scott got caught out by the weather during Sunday morning’s qualifying session forcing him to start race two from the outside of row three, but another storming drive saw him climb to the front of the field by the end of lap five, and kept the advantage despite a mid-race safety car to take his third win in four races.
“Sunday was a very different day,” insisted Scott. “A storm came in just before second qualifying, but after five laps on wet tyres we were in P1, so we came in to the pits to make further changes to see if we could better our time.
“Unfortunately, everyone else stayed out and got quicker as track conditions improved and when we went back out on track only two minutes later, the rain came down heavily again. We were unable to better our time in the now really wet conditions and I was disappointed to end the session in sixth.
“We made a lot of changes to the car for race two and straight away it felt really good. I made a couple of bold moves, at Eau Rouge on the first lap and then later around the outside at turn 16/17, to maintain momentum and not lose sight of the two leading cars ahead.
“I moved up to second and then had a two seconds gap to close down on Dev. I got passed him at Kemmel and was then able to pull away to win my third race, which is fantastic! A big credit goes to my team RP Motorsport – it feels great to have extended the lead in both the Drivers’ and Team Championships.”
