Another lost chance for Jimmy Auby

After a promising start to his Jerez race weekend, Lebanese racer Jimmy Auby was unable to repeat his strong practice performance in qualifying, leaving the 21 year-old with everything to do in the races. The GTA Motor driver was making his Jerez debut in the FIAT Spanish Formula 3 Championship and on his first time at the Spanish track was just four tenths off the quickest F306 driver.

Jimmy and his engineer worked hard between the two practice sessions, studying data and in-car video footage and for the second session improved the car’s handling even further, gaining three tenths of a second and moving Jimmy into ninth overall and third in class. In this final session before the critical qualifying, Jimmy and the team elected to go out on old tyres and were just two tenths off the overall quickest driver and now fastest of the F306 class runners.

However when he switched to new tyres, the car struggled with mid-corner oversteer, dropping Jimmy down to 13th, a second off the overall quickest time and four tenths slower than the class leader.

Saturday morning’s qualifying session was held on a damp track and an acclimatisation lap on dry weather slick tyres established that wet weather tyres were required, the change improving his lap times by ten seconds. The result put Jimmy fourth in class and 13th overall for the first of two races.

"When I woke up on Saturday morning and heard the rain I knew it was going to be an exciting day." said Jimmy. "The track wasn’t completely wet so we decided to see if it was dry enough for slicks but soon found it wasn’t. After going so well in practice and improving throughout the sessions, it’s a bit disappointing to wind up only fourth in class."

In the first race Jimmy made a good start to gain a place off the line but got boxed in for the next corner dropping him back to 15th. Over the new few laps, a superb drive allowed him to get to within two tenths of a second off the quickest lap and just five thousandths of a second off the class leader as he managed to work his way up the field to challenge for eighth.

However a rare error on the exit of Turn 10 brought his charge to an early finish. "I came out of Turn 10 a little too fast which caused me to go off on the exit." said Jimmy. "It was disappointing to end that way as the car had been good in the race and I’d been able to get some quick times in."

For race two, Jimmy started 19th and managed to make up a few places on the first few laps and was up to tenth by lap seven. Despite being quicker than the car ahead, Jimmy was unable to pass and although he managed to get a good run on the last lap he was pushed back to 11th and fifth in class.

I feel the weekend went OK. I knew coming here it was going to be a hard race as we were behind on track knowledge. Even still we managed to have a good race pace and I feel if qualifying had not been wet the weekend would have been a lot better. I now look forward to the next race in Barcelona on 1/2 November."

- Aitor Pilán –