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Will shows promise in Friday BRDC British F3 action at Spa-Francorchamps

Will Palmer was unfortunate to come away from race one of the BRDC British Formula 3 Championship meeting at Spa-Francorchamps with a 16^th place finish, a scant reward for the strong pace he had shown in qualifying and the early stages of the opening encounter in Belgium. The 2015 BRDC Formula 4 Champion is making a one-off appearance in the championship this week (8/9 July) before he resumes his Formula Renault 2.0 duties later this month.

After a promising test day on Thursday, where he had consistently been in the top-five throughout, the BRDC Superstar was confident heading into the 20-minute qualifying session which began Friday's action. After warming his Pirelli tyres up, the HHC Motorsport driver moved into the top-five before improving his time to move into second position at the halfway point.

Will was to go even faster and he moved into provisional pole position by posting a lap time of 2m17.230s, which put him 0.158s clear of Carlin driver and BRDC British Formula 3 Championship leader Ricky Collard. As time ticked down, Collard and his team-mate Lando Norris found more speed to move ahead of Will but it was a mightily encouraging qualifying for Will as he headed the second row of the grid.

Speaking after qualifying the 19-year-old said: "It was good to come into the championship and straight away be in the top-three. We had a good test yesterday as it was my first time at Spa so I am happy to be in the top-three. I am confident that we have the pace to fight for the victory, qualifying was a bit tricky with trying to get a slipstream so it was good to get a strong result. We were P1 for a fair bit of the session so I think we can definitely challenge for the win from there."

As the lights went out to start the race, Will was unfortunate to lose two positions to Double R Racing's Matheus Leist and Douglas Motorsport's Enaam Ahmed. The safety car was deployed after an opening corner crash which denied him the ability to strike back immediately. Once the action resumed, Will found himself in a tussle with Lanan Racing's Toby Sowery and Sean Walkinshaw Racing's Thomas Maxwell. After they passed him into the final chicane, Will fought back and made a move on Australian Maxwell but contact was made, resulting in damage to both with Will losing his front-wing.

The Southwater racer pitted at the end of the lap and dropped to the back of the field. After rejoining, the race was prematurely ended as Quinlan Lall suffered a big accident at turn 15, leaving Will no time to recover. After the race result was taken from a lap previous to the crash, Will was classified in 16^th.

After the race, Will said: "I lost two positions in the final chicane but out of Les Combes, Maxwell was slow on the exit. As Sowery went through I went to follow but we made contact and that was that. It is not ideal to be starting low down for race two but hopefully we can come through the pack, make up some positions and then post a good lap time for the race three grid."

Race two of the meeting begins at 10:05 (09:05 BST) tomorrow with the third and final race at Spa-Francorchamps getting underway at 15:35. You can follow Will's progress through live timing and updates on the official BRDC British Formula 3 website.   

BRDC British Formula 3 Championship - Spa-Francorchamps - Qualifying

1. Lando Norris, Carlin, 2m16.820s
2. Ricky Collard, Carlin, +0.092s
3. Will Palmer, HHC Motorsport, +0.410s
4. Matheus Leist, Double R Racing, +0.574s
5. Enaam Ahmed, Douglas Motorsport, +0.722s
6. Thomas Maxwell, Sean Walkinshaw Racing, +0.759s
7. Thomas Randle, Douglas Motorsport, +0.800s
8. Eugene Denyssen, Sean Walkinshaw Racing, +0.806s
9. Toby Sowery, Lanan Racing, +0.899s
10. Tarun Reddy, Fortec Motorsports, +0.916s

BRDC British Formula 3 Championship - Spa-Francorchamps - Race One Provisional

1. Lando Norris, Carlin, 5 Laps
2. Matheus Leist, Double R Racing, +1.384s
3. Ricky Collard, Carlin, +1.858s
4. Enaam Ahmed, Douglas Motorsport, +2.131s
5. Toby Sowery, Lanan Racing, +3.213s
6. Tarun Reddy, Fortec Motorsports, +7.909s
7. Ben Hingeley, HHC Motorsport, +10.659s
8. Al Faisal Al Zubair, Fortec Motorsports, +13.153s
9. Thomas Randle, Douglas Motorsport, +15.395s
16. Will Palmer, HHC Motorsport, +1m13.868s

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