2011 British F3 off Season/Silly season news etc (merge)

[Deemun]

Originally Posted by Alex K

Slight off topic. Wayne Boyd will compete in Cooper Tires presents USF2000 National Championship powered by Mazda in a #4 DHL car run by Belardi Auto Racing. That's for those who were wondering were he was. Missing him BF3, and am also surprised he's still with DHL, although am not sure if it's same branchthat backs him?!

Great to see that Wayne has a deal but he desrves better than USF2000, though I guess it's to give him a foothold on the road to Indy. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight knocking back the RSF deal for Formula Renault in 2009 wasn't such a smart move.........I wish him the very best of luck though....go win it Wayne!

[runshaw]

Originally Posted by Deemun

Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight knocking back the RSF deal for Formula Renault in 2009 wasn't such a smart move.........I wish him the very best of luck though....go win it Wayne!

I have thought exactly the same. He probably would have challenged for the FRUK and British F3 title in the previous two years if he had accepted RSF. As it stands, I found his 2009 season with T-Sport quite odd. Good luck to him though.

[strider]

If you want to following British F3 testing from Oulton Park tomorrow use this link. Session times are 0930-1055, 1325-1420 & 1525-1610.

[strider]

Something of a surprise at Oulton today - the fastest Carlin car was only 3rd! Report here.

Good efforts by Scott Pye (Double R) and Menasheh Idafar (T-Sport), particularly since they were under Jean-Eric Vergne's lap record. I'd say the conditions were pretty prefect, though.

[kipper]

Also intersting to note Kotaru Sakurai testing in a Rookie class, Hitech car.

[strider]

Yes, he drove the car at Silverstone on the day after the Media Day, too, so hopefully that's another addition to the grid.

[strider]

The teams have been testing at Snetterton on the new 300 circuit yesterday and today. Kevin Magnussen and Carlos Huertas shared the honours, which was interesting as this was mostly a new circuit to them all.

Report here, which includes a link at the bottom to the times in full.

As the report mentions, this is the last official test before the first race meeting at Monza on April 16/17, only ten days away.

[runshaw]

Is Chritodoulou actually confirmed yet? Looking at the times, that must be the best lap Adderly Fong has ever done to be 7th! Good to see Richard Bradley out, its ashame he has never raced on British soil and uses a Singapore license. Was he just having a play out? He's with TOM's this year doing Japanese F3, so he could be a factor against the British regulars at Macau. It would be good if he dovetailed his Japanese commitments and did a few British F3 rounds, Ericsson managed to juggle that pretty well.

[strider]

Yes, Adderley Fong did well, particularly compared to his new team-mate.

At the moment Richard Bradley is getting some test mileage before his campaign in Japan, but, as you say, Marcus Ericsson doubled up the two to some extent before, also with Double R, so Richard could do the same.

As for Christodoulou, I honestly don't know. My guess would be be that he has some budget but not the full amount, so he will at least start the season because he's done all the tests. I hope so.

[blindfold]

With everything that happened in Japan recently, I believe the pre-season tests and maybe ever the first race have been delayed/cancelled. I would guess this is why Richard Bradley has now popped up in a British test...

[strider]

Hadn't thought about that.

The situation is Japan really is dreadful even though they are instinctively doing their best to cope and go about their lives as normally as possible. It's off-topic, but this is what a friend of mine who works for Arai wrote:

Big Earthquake and Tunami damaged Northern part of Japan which is about
300 - 500 km up North from our location, and fortunately all of Arai members
are OK although some part of our facilities had minor damages. My office PC
monitor dropped from my desk and now it shows strange color background.

I tried to check my house, but elevator in our condo was out of order, so I
had to go up to 24th floor by stairs. Fortunately, our 37 inch living TV
monitor was okay, but bookshelf in my room fell down, so I have a job to do
at home today.

My wife has job in Tokyo which is about 30 km away from Arai headquarters
office. After earthquake, all motorways were closed and all trains, metros
were stopped, so she had no idea to go back home. So, I drove my car down
to Tokyo through local street which was full with other trucks, buses and
cars. It took about 10 hours to reach to her office in Tokyo and came back
home.

Local TV report 2-300 people were killed and over 700 people were still
missing, but I assume over 2,000 people might be killed mostly by Tunami. It
is different earthquake from "Great Earth Quake in Kobe" about 16 years
ago.

It is sad to see TV report, but only God may know why it happened.