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Jimmy Auby concluded his Spa-Francochamps race meeting with a smile of satisfaction |
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Tuesday, 10 June 2008 |
Jimmy Auby went home after the second meeting in the Spanish F3 season, and only his second race in a F3 car, satisfied with the results from the weekend. . A good first race combined with a very hard second race confirming that the Belgium Spa-Francochamps circuit is one of the hardest on the Spanish F3 championship calendar.
Jimmy’s qualifying results were overshadowed by him not getting a clear lap and combined with three red flags left him down in twelfth position and sixth in class on the grid. While Jimmy was satisfied with the car’s set up it was further refined by his engineer for the first race.
In race one while Jimmy made an excellent start, and was up to ninth overall out of the first turn, he lost four positions by being slipstreamed down the long Spa straight over the next few laps. Thereafter an intense battle ensued with Jimmy eventually passing and clearing these competitors that allowed him to focus on hunting down the cars ahead which had now opened up a gap. Jimmy was able to capitalize on his car’s good set up and was able to push the car without mistakes to allow him to catch and pass for eighth, then in a controversial move in the last corner, while defending his eighth position, passed his team-mate for seventh place overall and a third place podium finish in class.
In the second race the first corner results were very different to race one with Jimmy getting boxed in causing him to drop down to tenth position and then over the next three laps got slipstreamed down the long straight and overtaken by a further three cars pushing him down to thirteenth position. During this period his car received damage to the right rear tire and the front wing. While the damage made the car difficult to drive Jimmy fought back recovering a number of positions ending the race ninth overall and sixth in class. He was confident that had the car not being suffering from under-steer due to the lack of front downforce caused by the front wing damage he would have been in a position to challenge for the two places in front of him as well.
After three days of really hard work with his team some of the potential results were lost on the track but Jimmy went away with the following thoughts;
“The weekend at Spa went well as I was able to demonstrate that I had the pace to run up front but with some unlucky breaks and a few mistakes on my part I was not able to do so. Qualifying cost me dearly and I need to concentrate on getting a better starting position for the next race at Albacete. Other than that I learnt a great deal this weekend on race craft and I really enjoyed the close racing”.
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