Lola Takes Pole Position for the Opening
Round of the British F3 International Series at Donington Park
02 April 2005
P1 Motorsport's Danilo Dirani gave Lola its second pole in the history of the
British F3 Championship, starting on the front of the grid for the opening round
of the British F3 International Series, which will take place at Donington on
Sunday morning.
Dirani's time of 1:02.764 minutes in the Lola B05/30 Mugen-Honda was
only 0.018 seconds slower than the time of last year's pole sitter,
Adam Carroll. "I
am very pleased," Dirani said after qualifying, "Especially as we entered
the first race of the Championship without doing much testing - we only did six
days in total. It's a new team, a new car and a new driver. It's fantastic!"
Hitech Racing driver Marko Asmer was second quickest, with a lap of
1:02.794. The Estonian out-qualified his team-mate Tim Bridgman by
0.468 seconds, but wasn't
too happy with the session: "I wanted to be on pole. The car was not perfect,
but it was ok. I was held up in traffic at the beginning so I had to do my fastest
lap towards the end. I was already quick but I was able to go a little bit quicker.
However, I hope to be on pole for the second race." Asmer was trying to
go for pole on his last lap, but he pushed too hard and went off into the gravel.
Mike Conway, who drives the Dallara F305 Opel Spiess for Fortec Motorsport,
set a solid 1:03.007, which assured him third spot on the grid. The
driver of the
nr 26 car was lapping well from the beginning and, with Dirani and Asmer, kept
topping the timing sheets. In the end Conway had to be content with third place: "It's
quite a short track and I had lots of problems with the traffic. I was fastest
on Thursday in the testing session by quite a bit and we should have been much
faster today. But hopefully with temperatures rising, we should do better in
the second qualifying.
2004 Formula BMK UK driver Josh Fisher qualified first in the National
Class.
Fisher, who drives for Team SWR, commented: "It feels really good to be
on pole. We didn't expect it, so it's great. I would be very disappointed if
I didn't win the race tomorrow. You have to think of the Championship, so I want
to score as many points as possible. But I am here to win."
It was a very close qualifying session, and Josh Fisher
just snapped pole from Barton Mawer who was leading the field at the
beginning
of the session. T-sport's
Barton Mawer said : "We are a bit further down than I would have liked.
The first four or five drivers of the National Class are within 0.300 seconds.
It's a good start though, and we know what to change for the second qualifying."
The
first race starts on Sunday morning at 9:50 hrs.
SRO
See 2005 series calendar for British
F3 International Series
Related Story 22.03.2005 - British
Formula 3 International Series Ready to Roll
