Weekend of mixed fortunes for Manor drivers
SPANIARD Roberto Merhi once again produced some impressive performances for Manor Motorsport at Germany's Norisring last weekend.
Teenager Merhi is fourth in the driver's championship after taking away an excellent fifth place finish during the first race of the weekend.
The Dinnington-based squad also moved into fourth place in the entrant standings.
Not for the first time, qualifying turned into something of a lottery, with the session starting wet and then progressively drying towards the end.
The top grid slots went to those drivers in the right place at the right time, but unfortunately Manor's trio weren't among the fortunate ones.
Merhi lined up 12th on the grid for the opening race on the Saturday, and he enjoyed a superb first lap by climbing into the top seven before setting about trying to find a way past Dutchman Henkie Waldschmidt.
On lap eight, the Manor ace moved ahead and into the top six. Esteban Gutierrez was the Spaniard's next target and he passed him for fourth on lap 13.
The good move proved short-lived though, when Merhi ran too deep into the first hairpin at the start of the 14th tour and Gutierrez nipped back ahead to demote the Manor man a place.
Further behind, teammates Pedro Enrique and Cesar Ramos were both having an impressive race after climbing up the order very well from 23rd and 26th on the grid respectively.
On lap 19, heavy rain hit the Norisring which meant red flags were shown and the race was halted with Mehri in fifth.
Each car lined up on the grid to have tyres changed from slicks to treaded wet-weather rubber but by the time the race got back under way, the scheduled time limit had surpassed. At this point round five was declared a result with Merhi finishing fifth, a gain of seven places on his starting slot.
Enrique was 14th – having climbed nine places – and Ramos was 16th, a gain of 10 positions on his grid slot.
In round six on the Sunday, Merhi was again the top finisher for Manor but his race wasn’t without incident.
Managing to come through from fourth on the grid into the lead on lap five, the Spanish ace slipped back on lap nine when he was passed by Christian Vietoris.
Then an unfortunate mistake at the second turn on the final lap meant Merhi ran wide and dropped to eighth position – missing out on his second points result of the weekend.
Moving up to second in the standings on Saturday, today’s result has seen Merhi slip back to fourth in the championship.
Ramos secured by far his best finish since graduating to the F3 Euroseries with an impressive drive to finish a superb 10th place, having started 16th on the grid.
Enrique, meanwhile, started in 14th place but ended the encounter down in 20th position after an action-packed outing.
Reflecting on the weekend, Manor team principal John Booth said: “We had a very good day on Saturday.”
“Roberto did a fantastic job from where he started, as did Pedro and Cesar – we were really pleased with the all-round team performance.”
“On the Sunday it was all going well until the last few laps but all in all it’s been a decent weekend.”
Rounds seven and eight of the 2009 Formula 3 Euroseries will take place over the weekend 18th and 19th July at Zandvoort, Holland.
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Weather for Dinnington
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Today
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Temperature: 13 C to 24 C
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Wind direction: North east
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