Carlin Return to Winning Ways as Jarvis Claims Debut British F3 Win

26 June 2006

Oliver Jarvis took a dominant debut win at Mondello Park, leading from pole position until the chequered flag, to claim the first win of 2006 for reigning British F3 Championship winning team Carlin Motorsport and the first for Mugen Honda. James Walker was second for Hitech Racing, just ahead of Mike Conway, who took his second podium of the day to move ahead at the top of the driver’s championship table.

Jarvis led the field away at the start, with James Walker and Mike Conway slotting in behind the Mugen Honda powered Dallara. Another driver who made a good start was Alberto Valerio who made up three places at the start.

At the front Jarvis started to open up a gap to Walker, as the Jerseyman started to feel the pressure from Conway. Across the line for the first time it was Jarvis, 1.3 seconds ahead of Walker, who was just 0.6 seconds in front of Conway. On lap 2 Ricardo Teixeira span off at Turn 3, causing the safety car to be deployed to allow the recovery of the beached Dallara.

For five laps the cars circulated behind the safety car, during which Valerio was award a drive through penalty for jumping the start. At the end of lap 7 the safety car peeled off and racing resumed, with Jarvis managing to stay well ahead of Walker and then started to open up a gap and was two seconds ahead by lap 11. Jarvis set the fastest lap on lap 10 and then set the fastest lap of the weekend the next time round.

Mike Conway kept pace with Walker but was unable to get on terms to threaten the Hitech driver. Towards the end of the race 4th placed Christian Bakkerud started to come under some pressure from Bruno Senna, but the die was set and as the chequered flag was shown at the end of the sixteenth lap it was Oliver Jarvis who celebrated, ahead of a pleased James Walker and Mike Conway who finished the weekend 5 points ahead of Bruno Senna in the championship race.

In the National Class Rodolfo Gonzalez took win number 7, with Cris Morgado returning to his more familiar spot of second in class. Gonzalez now holds a commanding 51 point lead in the National Class.

Oliver Jarvis: Thanks very much to everyone at Carlin Motorsport to Neil Brown Engineering who've done a fantastic job this weekend, the car was superb throughout the race. I was fairly confident at the restart, it's quite hard to overtake here and I had the pace on James behind, just kept my cool.

The package has been strong all year, unfortunately things haven't gone right for us. We've shown as a package that Carlin and Mugen Honda are more than capable of winning races, it’s just a case of getting it all together. We've done that today and proved we can win.

James Walker: "To be fair Oliver drove a pretty good race. The rhythm was obviously disrupted by the long safety car, but while I could stay with him over the first two laps, he was doing really consistent laps. It was a better afternoon than this morning, but yes good for the team, they worked hard and we got a good result. As far as I'm concerned we've always been where I wanted to be, it's just a case of having the luck which we didn't have this morning. Just shows when we stay out of trouble, do what we're capable of, we can right up there. I had to keep Mike Conway at bay but I think I pulled a second or two on him, but the last two laps my tyres were gone and he closed in a bit, I just had to make sure I didn't make a mistake."

Mike Conway: "Two podiums are good, a second and third's not a bad weekend. We made a good start in the first race and slotted into second, but we're really looking not to settle for positions at this point so come Snetterton we want to be back on top. It's very good for the team to get 1-2-3 this weekend for the first race, we were really pleased after getting the top three in first qualifying, we showed we're the team to beat and we're getting the job done. We tested well in Snetterton, but Carlin have been quick there too, so I expect it will be a competitive weekend."

SRO

See 2006 series calendar for British F3 Championship

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