Solid start at Silverstone to Championship opener

After securing a late entry to the opening round of the 2006 BARC Formula Renault Championship with Falcon Motorsport at Silverstone, Michael had the hard task of jumping straight into the qualifying session on Saturday morning after missing out on a testing entry. ?We were too late to reserve a testing slot so we missed out on some valuable running on Friday. I always knew that qualifying would be a steep mountain to climb because I have not worked with the team since early February and would be behind the others in terms of recent track experience?.

With only a twenty minute qualifying session to get up to speed and get the best out of the car and conditions, Michael wasted no time at all by taking provisional pole position. With times constantly dropping throughout the session, Michael was fighting for pole position until the end of the session when he was knocked off by a slower ?Club? class car. ?It was frustrating because I knew there was a lot more time to come from the car and to still be only 0.125 seconds of pole (3rd position) proves that we could easily have been on the front row?.

Michael made a fantastic start to the race and managed to sneak past the pole-man, Richard Singleton into Copse corner. ?I was really pleased with my start because it was the first time I had managed to do one in that car so it was a relief to get away from the line!? After dropping back into third place, in close contention behind the top two, Michael was engrossed in a fantastic battle with Matt Shawyer for third place. After battling for the majority of the race, Shawyer finally managed to pass at ?Brooklands? with three laps left to go. ?I was really struggling with the balance of the car half way through the race. I think I pushed the tyres too hard initially because I was suffering from a lot of understeer which was getting worse every lap. Matt was really pushing me hard and I had to drive quite defensively, especially down the National straight into ?Brooklands?. I ran wide towards the end and he managed to get past. I pushed as hard as I could to keep up but the car was just getting worse?.

The Forth place gives Michael a solid bank of points heading into the second round of the championship at Snetterton (29th April). ?Naturally I was disappointed not to be on the podium but I think it was just as important to get some points in the bag and make a good impression on my debut. I can?t wait till next weekend to be on top!?