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Bittersweet Snetterton Qualifying For Metcalfe |
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Sunday, 13 August 2006 |
AKA Lemac ace Jeremy Metcalfe will start the first of tomorrow’s two Formula Renault UK races at Snetterton Circuit from the third row of the grid after a bittersweet day of qualifying at the Norfolk venue.
Having been extremely impressive during Friday’s official pre-event test, the 18-year-old headed into today’s pair of qualifying sessions to determine the grid for the 13th and 14th rounds of the season confident of a strong performance.
During the first 20-minute session, setting the grid for round 13, Jeremy posted a best lap of 1m 05.564 seconds (107.18mph) to claim sixth position on the timesheets, less than two 10ths of a second outside the pole position time.
For round 14 qualifying, however, understeer problems emerged at the beginning of the session and even though the Fleet teenager entered the pits early on to try and rectify the difficulties, it was all to no avail. He ended up disappointed with the 10th quickest time after setting a lap of 1m 05.862 seconds (106.69mph).
“Right from the start of the second session the car had really bad
understeer”, explained Jeremy, “I came into the pits to make some
changes, went back out again but still had really bad understeer. I
don’t know what’s changed since yesterday and this morning because the
car had been great all weekend up until second qualifying.
“I went well in testing, we weren’t too bad this morning, but then this
afternoon we’ve only managed to qualify in 10th place and that’s going
to make race two much more difficult. I think we just have to look at
the data overnight, try and work out what went wrong and make sure we
have the best possible car for tomorrow.”
He added: “We need to score well to stay in the championship top five.
We had a great start to the year but the middle part of the season has
been disappointing so I hope we can record two strong results on Sunday
to help turn our fortunes around.”
Round 13 will take place at 11.40 tomorrow, Sunday, 13th August, with
round 14 scheduled to start at 15.45. Both races will be broadcast live
on Motors TV, channel 413 of the Sky Digital platform and through cable
provider NTL on channel 173.
Formula Renault UK Championship Provisional Driver Standings (after rounds 11&12):
| Points |
Driver |
Points |
| 1st |
Patrick Hogan |
286 |
| 2nd |
Sebastian Hohenthal |
284 |
| 3rd |
Cheng Cong Fu |
229 |
| 5th |
Jeremy Metcalfe |
196 |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 06 January 2007 )
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