It was a good weekend for Red Bull Junior Team driver Tom Blomqvist at Hockenheim with Blomqvist scoring 3rd places in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship Races 1 and 2.
For F3 regular Blomqvist, the19-year-old Briton, it was a smart turn-around after a frustrating Silverstone.
“It wasn’t a bad weekend at all.” said Blomqvist. “We are not where we need to be with the car yet but I like to think that with the testing we did at Vallelunga and the work the Eurointernational guys did on the car we have taken a step forward. We are all working very hard.”
A wet Race 1
The weather continued to play a big part in the F3 series and Race 1 on Saturday was wet. Blomqvist described his race. “I started P4 and my pace was quite good actually and I was quite happy with that. A few guys spun off and we benefitted, but like they say, ‘you’ve got to keep the car on the black stuff to finish,’ and that is what we did. I felt I had the pace of Marciello and Serralles but I couldn’t get close enough.” Victory went to the Prema Powerteam driver Italian Raffaele Marciello ahead of American Felix Serralles driving for Fortec Motorsports.
Blomqvist qualified 2nd behind Marciello for the dry Race 2 but a small error let Briton Josh Hill through to 2nd in the race and our Junior driver had to defend the last podium spot as he explained with typical honesty. “The guys behind were probably a little bit quicker but I managed to keep them behind and held on to 3rd. So two podiums for the day was not bad, I was happy with that.”
Taking a chance in Race 3
“We know we don’t have the fastest car, the guys are pushing to make up those missing tenths so for today’s Race 3 where we were starting from 9th we thought it was worth it to take a bit of a chance. They made a change to the car in the hope of making it better and making up some places. Unfortunately it didn’t work. The difficulty we are having is that car can go from oversteer to understeer to oversteer, a bit inconsistent through the same corner. The change we made seemed to exaggerate that and it took me time in the race to adjust to it. Still it was worth trying, we know not to do it again,” concluded Blomqvist who crossed the line 8th.
So now it is a case of continuing the search for improvement. “We don’t have any testing planned before the next race at Brands Hatch. We’ve just got to go home and analyse and digest what we’ve got and hope to come up with the right solution for Brands because qualifying will be so important there, with 30 cars on the track.”
