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Germany’s
Johannes Seidlitz started the BARC Formula championship in fine style with a win
in the opening round at Brands Hatch on Easter
Monday.
With the wintery weather conditions
bringing the onset of snow just before qualifying, Johannes and the team
engineer Peter Sieber predicted the weather well to qualify to start
2nd for race 1. With the snow stopping the track was slowly drying
and again the decision on which setup to put on the car was going to be
critical.
The qualifying session for race two
was always going to be about the last 2 or 3 laps as the track was becoming
faster lap by lap. With 3 laps to go it looked like Johannes had positioned
himself perfectly to secure another top 3 position on the grid. Setting his
fastest lap of the session on his penultimate lap, it looked like his final lap
would have moved him to the top 3 until he encountered a slowing car towards the
end of the lap. The end result being 6th position for the start of
race 2.
Race day, like qualifying was to
encounter the wintery weather conditions, with race 1 starting on wet tyres
while it was snowing. After a couple of stoppages due to on-track incidents,
Johannes kept a clear head and made a clean start to lead into turn one while
championship rival, Ollie Hancock bogged down and dropped towards the rear of
the field.
The early laps of the race saw
Johannes and Ash Davies swap places a number of times much to the delight of the
frozen spectators! By lap 4 Johannes was back at the front and began extending
his lead. As lap 5 started there was a 1.1 second gap to Davies. Before the
lap was completed, another incident resulted in the race being stopped and the
officials declaring the result, Johannes securing the win much to the delight of
the Mark Burdett Motorsport team.
After the victory lap and podium
celebrations were completed, Johannes spoke to the media, saying “It was a tough
race with so many starts and stops. Once we got racing I was careful while I
got the tyres up to temperature – the car felt really good so this was not too
long. Once the tyres were warm Ash and I had a good battle for a couple of laps
before I managed to get a gap. Then as soon as I got a gap the race was
stopped. I have to thank all the team for this, Peter Sieber my engineer for
getting the setting right and to Chris and all the mechanics for working so hard
and giving me a great car!”
Race 2 was to follow a similar
pattern with a couple of attempts being required to get the race underway. With
the race shortened from 20 to 12 laps due to the number of start attempts, the
pressure was on. Starting on the wet side of the track, Johannes dropped 2
places from the start. Fighting to regain the positions at the start of lap 2,
he was forced wide at Paddock Hill bend, damaging the front of the car and
dropping to 13th place. Some determined driving and impressive
overtaking saw him challenging for 10th place early in lap 6 only for
the red flag to be brought out to stop the race, this time with the chequered
flag to signify the end of the race. The results were declared at the end of
the previous lap, placing Johannes 12th.
After the race Johannes could only
describe the race as ‘Disappointing due to bad luck’ going on to say “if the
first attempt to start the race had worked out I could have been in the top 3,
but that is racing! We won the first race so now all I will do is look forward
to Rockingham!”
The next round of the BARC Formula
Renault championship will take place at Rockingham Motor Speedway on 19
April.
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