Sunday, May 17, 2009

Chilton secures dual Silverstone poles

Max Chilton claimed his third British F3 pole position from four attempts this season after topping the times in qualifying for race two on the Silverstone GP circuit this afternoon.

The Carlin driver, who claimed he completed an almost perfect lap to snatch pole in this morning's first session, found another 0.017s this afternoon, to set a best lap of 1m39.781s on his first run on new tyres and claim the top spot.

He then parked his Dallara-Volkswagen in the pitlane with almost a third of the session remaining and watched his rivals try and fail to beat his benchmark.

Chilton's Australian team-mate Daniel Ricciardo recovered from his first session off at Copse to set second fastest time, 0.148s adrift, and lock out the front row for Carlin.

Like many, the Red Bull-backed driver had three bites at extracting the best from his tyres and his 1m39.929s best came on his 11th lap with barely a minute of the session remaining.

That supressed Fortec's Riki Christodoulou to third on the grid, 0.011s further back and the last man to break through the 1m40s barrier in this slower session.

Hitech's Renger van der Zande failed to extract some expected extra pace from his Dallara-Mercedes this time and finished the session fourth on a 1m40.016s best, 0.164s clear of T-Sport's Adriano Buzaid.

The Brazilian again joined the action late, but struggled for speed initially before nailing a decent lap at the death to drop Daisuke Nakajima, who again set the pace early on for Raikkonen Robertson Racing, to sixth on the grid.

JTR's Nick Tandy showed marked improvement compared with this morning (when he struggled to 15th) but his 1m40.517s best was still only good enough to round out the top 10, behind Henry Arundel, Carlos Huertas and Walter Grubmuller, who again struggled to match the pace of their team-mates.

Pos Driver Team Car Time 1. Max Chilton Carlin D/V 1m39.781s 2. Daniel Ricciardo Carlin D/V 1m39.929s 3. Riki Christodoulou Fortec D/M 1m39.940s 4. Renger van der Zande Hitech D/M 1m40.016s 5. Adriano Buzaid T-Sport D/V 1m40.180s 6. Daisuke Nakajima Double R D/M 1m40.251s 7. Henry Arundel Carlin D/V 1m40.286s 8. Carlos Huertas Double R D/M 1m40.424s 9. Walter Grubmuller Hitech D/M 1m40.468s 10. Nick Tandy JTR M/M 1m40.517s 11. Wayne Boyd T-Sport D/V 1m40.748s 12. Oliver Oakes Carlin D/V 1m40.919s 13. Gabriel Dias T-Sport (N) D/H 1m40.975s 14. Daniel McKenzie Fortec (N) D/H 1m41.128s 15. Hywel Lloyd CF D/H 1m41.314s 16. Victor Garcia Fortec D/M 1m41.326s 17. Stephane Richelmi Barazi Epsilon D/M 1m42.583s 18. Victor Correa Litespeed (N) S/H 1m43.062s 19. Max Snegirev West-Tec (N) D/H 1m44.397s

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