CLUB AUTOSPORT NATIONAL REPORTS76 AUTOSPORT.COM 22 AUGUST 2019Simmons leads polesitter
Jewiss early on in the third
BRDC British F3 raceAL
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Maldonado streaked clear to
become 13th different winnerof Luffield to get almost entirely alongside,
but couldn’t match the corner exit speed
of ‘Cutter’. Instead Jewiss had to defend
from title contender Johnathan Hoggard
in third, a feat he successfully managed.
Race three represented a second chance,
but again Jewiss fell behind Ayrton
Simmons (Chris Dittmann Racing) into
Copse. This time Jewiss seemed to have
better speed, inching closer to his 2018
F4 sparring partner by a tenth a lap, until
one wobble at Brooklands put paid to that
surge and he had to settle for second again.
The timesheets may have recorded a
solitary podium for Carlin’s Clement
Novalak, but extending his 40-point lead
in the standings to 52 from Hoggard
represented a good weekend’s work.
Two fourth-row starts in races one and
three weren’t ideal, neither was his seventh
place at the end of the opener. But ninth
to third in just four laps for the damp
second race banked more important
‘passing points’, followed up with aSILVERSTONE
MSVR
17-18 AUGUST“Up to now I would have said two second
places would have been excellent. But to
get pole and do the hard work to get there,
to lose it off the line twice is not acceptable
from my side and not good enough. I cost
the team two victories this weekend.”
Kiern Jewiss may be the kind of driver
who beats himself up when not achieving
his best, but it was hard to disagree with the
Douglas Motorsport racer’s ‘what-could-
have-been’ assessment of the Silverstone
BRDC British F3 weekend after he had
lost two race wins from pole.
In race one he lost out to Sasakorn
Chaimongkol into Copse, Hillspeed’s
second-year Thai driver becoming the
12th different winner this year.
Jewiss seemed to have only one
opportunity to try and get back past,
that being a sneaky shuffle up the insideJewiss fails to capitalise on double F3 pole
seventh-to-fourth run in race three.
Other than the first race podium,
Hoggard’s weekend was a struggle. In
race two, a light touch between Hoggard
and Neil Verhagen at Club spun both
around and, while able to continue, he
found the pace hard to come by. That
was followed by fifth in race three with
no real chance to pounce on Novalak.
Befitting a series which has a knack of
finding new winners, race two unearthed the
season’s 13th victor from the 17-car grid.
Manuel Maldonado finished at the back in
race one, but crucially kept going despite
wing damage to start the damp-but-
drying second race up front.
He kept the car planted through the
slippery surface, even though he was
the first to encounter the trouble spots,
managing the conditions deftly to claim
his first 2019 victory.
“Even though that’s not the way we
want to do it in the reversed grid, we made
sure in tricky conditions we got off the
line well, built a gap up and stayed there,”
the Fortec Motorsports driver said.
The 41-second winning margin for the
supersoft-shod Dallara F301 of Ashley
Dibden in the second Monoposto race was
not nearly as dominant as it seemed. Michael
Watton – third in race one – actually had
the best grip in the greasy conditions in his
2002 Jedi, reeling in Dibden with the aid of
a few backmarkers. The pass was made with
only a few minutes to go, but just one lap
later Watton stopped at Brooklands with an
issue, allowing Dibden back into the lead.
Alex Fores (Dallara F301) won the opener by
a much smaller 4s margin over Dibden.
Cian Carey was unlucky that a safety car
in the F3 Cup opener shortened his chance
of challenging George Line for the win.