This Championship was being held on a very small track and very difficult to drive – one small mistake would cost you a lot of time.  Elliott started the practice days off trying the new LockDown tyre and also the Diamond Back, which he found very good.  He liked the LockDown X3 compound and was able to set some of the fastest lap times in practice which he felt would be the tyre he would probably like to use going into qualifying but due to changeable weather conditions it was causing a lot of confusion with what tyres to run and at what time of day as the track would change dramatically between morning and afternoon.

Qualifying

The first part of qualifying Elliott was faced with a damp wet track so we opted for an M4 compound, which worked quite well but was finding the track very difficult as the track dried out.  As the qualifying progressed through the rest of the day and the following day we had been using Blockades X2 and we also tried the Suburbs X2 which were the best tyres we had tried as the track had dried and was becoming blue grooved and the Suburbs were working brilliantly.  In rounds 3 and 4 Elliott was held up really badly by traffic and with some bad refereeing Elliott was not able to pass these drivers quick enough to give him a TQ. So he was a little disappointed as we feel we would have qualified 2nd but ended up 4th, which with all the troubles we had wasn’t too bad.

Finals Day

We had a semi-final of 20 minutes.  Elliott ran the Suburbs X2 again which again were working brilliantly and he was able to finish 2nd in his semi just behind Robert Battle.  With his time Elliott was able to qualify 4th on the grid for the A-Main Final.

A-Main Final

Elliott opted for a set of Blockade X2 as these tyres were a little easier to drive than the Diamond Backs as it was an hour long final. Elliott made a good start and set some good lap times in the early stages but unfortunately with a few mistakes it cost him quite a lot of time but was looking good. Unfortunately on one of his fuel stops where he entered the pit lane with very low fuel it made the engine run lean. After re-fueling he left the pit lane but stopped just by the exit. With a track producing 27-second laps it was quite a lot of time missed once we got the engine fired up again. Elliott drove very hard and was able to end up 8th overall.

The tyre wear was extremely good – out of all the non Pro-Line Drivers we seemed to have quite a lot of tread left on the tyre after the hour long final and Elliott said he had plenty of grip and traction left on the car. It was such a shame he lost so much time as our car was looking much better than most after the 30-minute mark.

Hupo was a real help to us all weekend bringing the tyres to the track for us and helping us with different compounds to try as he knows this track really well.

As you are aware there is a Pro-Line race in France in October and also an electric race in Paris – just to let you know Elliott will be attending both races, which look real fun.

Kind regards

Suburbs X2 Tyres were great and easy to drive on!