Parente Secures Pole Positions for Both F3
Races at Croft
07 May 2005
Carlin Motorsport driver Alvaro Parente continued his impressive
return to the British F3 International Series by putting his Dallara
F305 Mugen-Honda on
pole position for both races at Croft. Setting the fastest times in the two
sessions, with laps of 1:14.251 and 1:14.639, the Portuguese driver was delighted
with the results. "Of course I am very happy to be on pole position for
both races here at Croft. It's the second and third pole positions for me this
season. We did a really good job yesterday preparing the car for qualifying
today," Parente said afterwards. "I really have to say thank you
to the team."
Fortec Motorsport's Mike Conway, who had been confident about qualifying
after setting the fastest lap in Friday's test session, had to
settle for second place
in both qualifying sessions, coming within 0.059 seconds and 0.093 seconds
of Parente's time.
Marco Asmer (Hitech Racing) will start race one in third position,
his lap time of 1:14.317 placing him just ahead of Christian Bakkerud
of Carlin Motorsport.
The two swapped positions in the second qualifying, which saw Bakkerud push
Asmer out of the top three. The Carlin Motorsport driver set a
time of 1:14.838, which
put him just a fraction ahead of the Estonian Hitech Racing driver.
Current Championship leader Danilo Dirani (P1 Motorsport) still has
not regained the pace he showed at Donington Park. After poor qualifying
results at Spa-Francorchamps
three weeks ago, the Brazilian finished in fifth and sixth for tomorrow races. "I
think this is where we will be for the rest of the year if we don't go and test
at bigger circuits," Dirani said afterwards. "We only did half a day
testing at Snetterton after the weekend at Spa and we have to do more testing
to get to know the car better and know what's going wrong. The car is not bad,
especially on old tyres. It is possible to finish in third place from starting
fifth, but it will be very difficult."
In the National class, Charlie Hollings of Promatecme set the fastest
lap times in both qualifying sessions, placing his Lola-Dome F106/4
Mugen Honda driver
on class pole position for tomorrow's two races.
Both sessions were red-flagged for a short time half way through. The
first qualifying saw Josh Fisher involved in a serious accident in
Sunny corner. The Team SWR
driver lost control of his Dallara F304 Mugen-Honda coming out of Sunny, one
of the fastest corners of the track. "I spun coming out of Sunny and I missed
all tyre barriers and went straight into the wall," Fisher said after returning
from a medical check-up. "The doctors said I am fine. I feel ok; I am just
suffering from headaches now. It's a shame, because I was running really well
before I went off." Although the car suffered severe damage, with both front
wheels, the nose and the rear wing gone, the team did a superb job getting the
car fixed for the second qualifying session. Fisher was able to check out any
problems with the car and completed 18 laps, which saw him qualifying in sixth
place in the National class and 20th on the grid overall.
This session was also briefly red-flagged, after Hitech Racing's
Tim Bridgman had to park his car coming out of the Chicane, due
to mechanical problems.
SRO
See 2005 series calendar for British
F3 International Series
Related Story 04.04.2005 - Second
British F3 Win of the Day for Brazilian Dirani
