Marcus Armstrong admitted his FIA European Formula 3 Championship weekend at Silverstone was not the one he was hoping for, with only a fifth and a sixth place to show for it despite feeling he had a strong car.
The Prema Theodore Racing driver headed into the weekend as the championship leader but fell behind Daniel Ticktum thanks to the Briton’s race one victory, with Armstrong being forced to ease off in the final stages of that race to conserve his tyres after failures for three of his team-mates, Mick Schumacher, Guanyu Zhou and Ralf Aron.
After a fifth-place finish in race two, Armstrong was full of hope for race three on Sunday as he had saved his best tyres for it, but his day was over with a damaged car after the first turn. However, he was at least able to take one positive away from Silverstone that no one driver dominated the weekend, so his points loss to his rivals was not as big as it could have been.
“No, certainly not,” said Armstrong to The Checkered Flag. “The one positive I can take out of it, no one had a really good weekend.
“It’s disappointing because the car felt really good all weekend, and race three we had a huge amount of potential considering we saved our good tyres for that race, but unfortunately we didn’t make it passed the first corner.”
Despite the lack of a podium at Silverstone, Armstrong remains optimistic for the rest of the season as he fights for the championship, particularly as the circuits to come he knows well from his days racing in Formula 4.
“I’m really optimistic for the rest of the championship,” admits the New Zealander. “Now we go to the tracks I know, we’ve been to their tracks, now it’s time to come to our tracks, and [it’s] game on.”
Armstrong feels fully supported by both his Prema team and by the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2018, and he feels that all bases are covered as he continues his attack on the championship, with the New Zealander just eighteen points behind Ticktum heading to the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli this weekend.
“[They are] fantastic, they are fully behind me,” said Armstrong. “Prema and Ferrari are fully behind me for the championship, that’s what we’re looking at.
“We’ve got all the bases covered, so we just need to go.”
