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Bratt Consolidates Championship Position At Croft |
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Saturday, 15 July 2006 |
Scorpio Motorsport’s Will Bratt managed to consolidate seventh position in the Formula Renault UK Championship standings at Croft this afternoon following a determined drive during the ninth round of the season.
Under incredibly warm skies, the 18-year-old finished the race in 12th position to add a further nine points to his year’s tally and although it wasn’t the kind of result he was looking for at the start of the weekend, Will does have the consolation of knowing he will start tomorrow’s 15-lap encounter from an excellent sixth on the grid.
This morning’s round nine qualifying session saw the Apotex Pharmaceuticals-backed ace struggle with understeer problems and, combined with heavy traffic throughout the 20-minute period, this conspired to prevent him from achieving the result he hoped for.
At the start of this afternoon’s race, Will made a great getaway from 12th place on the grid to move alongside Josh Fisher but the latter sternly defended his line, so much so that he forced Will towards the pitwall and so the Adderbury teenager had to think twice about any overtaking attempt in order to avoid a serious collision.
Fisher’s move had also allowed Will’s Scorpio team-mate David Epton to get by so on lap one Will found himself in 13th position and keen to quickly try and make inroads back towards the top 10.
For several laps the field ran largely unchanged, drivers unable to muster any genuine passing attempts, but Will did manage to move back into his original grid placing of 12th position on lap nine when championship leader Patrick Hogan slid out of second place.
During the closing stages Will did seem confident of producing a decisive passing attempt on team-mate Epton at the hairpin but he was unable to quite find the gap he needed and crossed the line on lap 14 just a 10th of a second adrift.
“We had a bit of a frustrating race really”, commented Will, “At the
start (Josh) Fisher ran me into the pit-wall as I was trying to pass
him off the line. I had made a really good start but he just moved over
on me and continued coming across until I had nowhere to go, which also
allowed David (Epton) to get past.
“We did have some problems with understeer in qualifying and
unfortunately the car still wasn’t quite right during the race. Even
so, there were a couple of times I thought I might be able to get by
David at the hairpin but I never quite had the edge I needed.”
Will added: “I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s race, especially as we
start in the top six, and I think we stand a very good chance of a
great result. If it’s as hot as today, which it should be, the race
will be tough and it will be a question of who has the most grip
available to them as today’s conditions made the track very slippery.”
The 10th round of the Formula Renault UK season will take place
tomorrow, Sunday, 16th July at approximately 16.05 and will be
broadcast live on Motors TV - available to Sky Digital viewers on
channel 413 and via cable operator NTL on channel 173.
2006 Formula Renault UK Championship Provisional Driver Standings (after round 9):
| Pos. |
Driver |
Points |
| 1st |
Patrick Hogan |
196 |
| 2nd |
Sebastian Hohenthal |
190 |
| 3rd |
James Sutton |
169 |
| 4th |
Sam Bird |
165 |
| 5th |
Jeremy Metcalfe |
164 |
| 7th |
Will Bratt |
130 |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 06 January 2007 )
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