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Championship Top Six In Reach For Impressive Bratt |
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Monday, 11 September 2006 |
Scorpio Motorsport’s Will Bratt remains in reach of a potential top six finish in the 2006 Formula Renault UK Championship after an impressive brace of seventh place results at Donington Park Grand Prix Circuit today.
Having struggled with grip issues during Saturday’s sole 20-minute qualifying session, the Apotex Pharmaceuticals-backed 18-year-old produced two action-packed drives in the 15th and 16th rounds of the 20-race championship to climb from 13th on the grid in the opening encounter of the weekend and 14th on the grid in the second outing.
Will’s combined 32-point total also enabled the Adderbury teenager to finish a highly creditable third in the standings for the prestigious Donington Park Racing Association Club (DPRAC) Cup, a trophy on offer to the British driver scoring the most points over the course of the four races to have been contested at the circuit this year.
Commenting on his weekend’s results, Will said: “We were so much quicker in the first race than we were in qualifying.
We were half a second off the fastest lap in the race while on Saturday
we were 1.5 seconds away from pole position. We took the decision to
use a softer setting on the car today and it worked really well.
“It is a little bit frustrating as if we had been able to show the same
pace in qualifying we would have been on the second row of the grid and
maybe we could have challenged for a podium. To finish in seventh place
was good though and I was pressuring David (Epton; Scorpio team-mate)
towards the end and almost snatched sixth place.”
Will added: “In the second race we made good progress again. Early on
there was quite a queue of traffic but I passed a few cars at Melbourne
Hairpin and a few more at Goddards. Overall I’m pretty happy with our
results as qualifying was very disappointing and yet we’ve consolidated
our position in the championship which is good.”
At the start of round 15, Will got away from the line cleanly and was
thankfully unaffected by chaos nearer the front of the grid when title
rivals Patrick Hogan and Sebastian Hohenthal collided at the start.
Making good progress over the early laps, Will was inside the top 10 by
lap four and a superb three-way battle involving team-mate David Epton
and Dean Smith raged during the closing stages with less than half a
second covering sixth-placed Smith and eighth-placed Will at the
chequered flag.
However, the aforementioned incident involving Hogan and Hohenthal saw
the Clerk of the Course move to exclude the latter from the race
results, meaning Will’s eighth position became seventh place in the
final classification.
Round 16 saw the Scorpio team-mates nose-to-tail once again during the
opening stages, the pair queuing up behind ninth-placed Pippa Mann, but
after dispatching the Comtec driver, Markus Niemela soon became the
target
While Epton was forced to retire from the race after contact from Cheng
Cong Fu on lap seven, Will continued on his way but was unable to get
fully on terms with Niemela during the final few laps, instead settling
for seventh position and 16 very important championship points.
Following this weekend’s race meeting, Will is 34 points behind
sixth-placed James Sutton in the driver standings but taking the
championship’s double ‘drop-score’ ruling into consideration the gap
increases so the Scorpio ace knows he needs a brace of very strong
results during the next two rounds at Brands Hatch Indy Circuit.
The Kent venue will host rounds 17 and 18 of the season two weeks from
now, 23rd/24th September, and the event marks the second visit of the
year to Brands Hatch for the Formula Renault UK competitors, having
previously raced there in April during the season opening race meeting.
2006 Formula Renault UK Championship Provisional Driver Standings (after rounds 15&16):
| Pos. |
Driver |
Points |
| 1st |
Patrick Hogan |
382 |
| 2nd |
Sebastian Hohenthal |
370 |
| 3rd |
Jeremy Metcalfe |
289 |
| = |
Sam Bird |
289 |
| 7th |
Will Bratt |
199 |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 29 December 2006 )
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