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British junior racer, Ollie Millroy made his car
racing debut in the opening rounds of the Formula BMW Europe Championship in
Barcelona at the weekend.
The Claygate teenager drives one of three Fisichella
Motorsport International cars in the brand new championship, which supports
eight rounds of the Formula 1 and GP2 championships at selected European
races.
“It wasn’t a good weekend in terms of results, but
what a fantastic experience,” said Ollie.
“The atmosphere was amazing and it was a special feeling racing in front
of thousands of spectators at a Grand Prix weekend. I know a lot of these guys
from karting and my first ever car race was exactly how I expected it to be,
hard racing and very competitive”.
The top Italian team made a number of significant
improvements to the set-up on Ollie’s car over the course of the weekend, which
resulted in Ollie having to adjust to the differences and he subsequently could
only manage the 22nd quickest time on the Circuit de Cataluña.
“We started the weekend with three new engineers,
all of whom worked very hard, nonstop, on the set-up,” said Ollie. “We took a
bit of a gamble in free practice and qualifying, setting the car up with a lot
of aero-grip and no mechanical grip. This gave me more down force and grip in
the corners but cost us a lot of time in straight line speed, so I could only
qualify 22nd. They altered
the setup and greatly improved the car before the first race and I was around
half a second quicker than I was in qualifying. By the end of the weekend I was
happy with the progress we had made, which we will work on further at my next
test at Hockenheim on the 19th/20th May”.
In race one on Saturday Ollie was making great
strides and improved throughout the opening 13 lap race, getting up to
18th before a collision bent his front left wishbone and put him back
to 22nd. However a very good drive with a damaged car got him back up
to 16th by the flag, posting consistent lap times half a second
quicker than in qualifying.
In the second race on Sunday morning Ollie was 21st
but a poor start lost him positions. A superb drive through the field allowed
him to make up several places until two-thirds of the way through the race when
he was hit by another car, damaging the left rear suspension and engine
cover.
With the engine cover looking likely to come off
over the remaining four laps, the team signalled him into the pits, bringing his
race to a premature conclusion.
“I didn’t get a very good start and lost a few
places off the line but I was working my way up through the field nicely when I
was hit by someone, damaging the car.
With only a few laps to go the team told me to pit so as to avoid being
black-flagged, which of course ended my race. Although it was a shame not to
finish and not score any points I am going away positive, ahead of the next
round of the championship at Zolder in
Belgium at the end of May”.
Ollie’s next outing is testing at Hockenheim on
19th/20th May with the next round of the championship, at
Zolder on 30th/31st May.
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