7th/8th July 2007



Jon’s practice session on Friday should have been an hour long, but due to a variety of technical issues, he was only able to complete around four laps altogether. Not surprisingly this meant a certain amount of lost time in familiarisation with the new circuit.

With qualifying pending, and with a distinct lack of track time, Jon made up for the time lost by trawling meticulously through the data of all the other team’s drivers for several hours, with the aim of maximising his position for the qualifying session ahead. This though was not an easy task, as the famous Val de Vienne circuit in France has eleven particularly difficult and demanding corners.

Come qualifying, however, and Jon was happy to end up with the ninth fastest time, just 0.5s away from the pole sitter. His best lap though had been 0.2s up on his own previous best of the day, but rather unfortunately he had to abort the lap as a result of traffic and yellow 
flags. 

All-in all, it was a good result when bearing in mind that the drives ahead of him, had either benefited from the advantage of a two day test mid-week, or were in their second year of the Series, or were more vastly experienced competitors. And it was this latter point that was strange, because of Jon’s involvement in the Eurocup Championship, he is not allowed to take part in the mid-week tests. Nevertheless, the team were very pleased with their young charge, going on record to say that Jon had produced an excellent performance. And what of the other Brits? Craig Dolby, despite having participated fully in the pre-race test sessions, was back in 14th, and Alexander Sims was last in the ‘A’ Class cars.

Race1
From a P9 start, Jon later said, “I made the worst start in my very short race car career. I had far too much wheel spin, and dropped back to P14 after avoiding a small collision.” Jon’s race pace following the start was very good, however, and despite using the race to get to grips with circuit after the lost testing time, he hauled himself up to 10th position, being the only driver to actually ‘overtake’ at this point. He was experiencing a lot of understeer, due to a damper problem, but the team were pleased under these circumstances.

Qualifying 2
Rain preceded qualifying, but the track had begun to dry. The team delivered in major fashion by being the only team starting on wet tyres, apart from Manor Motorsport. As the circuit dried, the times naturally started to fall, but with Jon at this point in fourth place, just 0.2s away from pole. After some quick decisions by the team, Jon was called in for slicks. In the meantime, fellow British driver Sims went P1, some 1.4s quicker, placing Jon in 5th, where he sayed as the rain began to fall once more. These things happen, but the team were still delighted with Jon’s performance.

Race 2
After making a better start from grid five than he had done in Race 1, Jon was pushed wide in the first corner, which relegated him back to seventh. Excellent race pace though meant he was soon back up with the front runners, and was able to comfortably take back his earlier fifth position with relative ease. And once again Jon was the only driver making any kind of overtaking manoeuvres..! Traffic issues meant his best lap time came on lap 13 of the 16 lap event, and even then it was only 0.2s away from the best. It was evident that Jon had made some major steps forward over the course of the French weekend, delivering terrific pace throughout the whole weekend's proceedings. 

The team is now working hard to cure the understeer problem that had dogged his attempts, but this should be cured for the next event at Hungaroring the coming weekend, during the Eurocup Championship race, which is good news for Jon, but maybe not so much for the other competitors!