As the title fight heats up between Imperatori and Yamauchi, the young swiss has scored valuable points thisweek-end at Motegi by taking a double victory.
The Japanese F3 championshipentered in the last third of theseason last week end at Motegi,and the title is far from decided inthe National class.Alexandre Imperatori: “We hadsome misfortune this year andthat means that despite ourstrong form we are chasing theleader in the standings but everythingis open and we have topush all-out till the end.”On friday, two practice sessionsof 45 minutes each gave time tothe drivers to adjust their setupand Alexandre worked with hisengineer through the program thatwas planned for the day.
In themorning, the PTRS driver lappedthe track second fastest but felthe could do better yet. In the afternoon,the team tried differentsolutions but Alexandre was notreally satisfied with the balance ofhis car. It was also decided not touse a new set of tyres to sparethese for the next round at Fuji:“In the second practice session,we tried a few new elements onthe car but the car did not reactas well as we hoped. Now we canstudy the data and prepare thecar for tomorrow's qualifying”.
On saturday morning, the drivershad 20 minutes to produce theirtwo best laps that would determinethe grid for race 1 and race2. On his first set of tyres, Alexandrematched Yamauchi’s pace lapfor lap: the fight for the title was adirect fight on the track and bothdrivers pitted together for a freshset of tyres at the halfway mark.
From this point onward, theytraded pole position for the remainderof the session as bothwent quicker each lap. On hislast lap Alex took the pole, justbefore the Toyota official driversnatched it on his last attempt for1 hundredth of a second.Therefore, Imperatori would startthe races on the outside of thefirst row. At the start of race 1,the swiss produced a stunningstart to lead into the first corner.
He then started to push andedged clear of Yamauchi in secondand halfway through the 14laps race, decided to control thepace: “I could see that when Ipushed, I could pull away butthese points are very importantand I preferred not to risk a mistakeand control the pace.”Even so, Alexandre also took thefastest lap of the race and tookthe win home.Everything would have to bedone again in sunday’s 20 lapsrace.
With another 2nd placestarting slot, Alexandre had tomake a perfect start. In fact, theyoung swiss made his best getawayof the season with only 2.6sec from 0 to 100 kph. Again,he took the lead into the first cornerand didn’t let it go during anyof the 20 laps. It was in fact verymuch a replay of the first race,where Alex could pull away whenneeded and controlled his pace atother times to crossed the line infirst place and take a welldeserveddouble win.
“It is a great result. Starting fromsecond is never optimal but todaywe made the most of it. I want togive a big thumbs up to my team,the mechanics, and my engineerwho are working very hard to giveme the chance to catch these victories.The result comes at a goodtime for us and we must carry thismomentum to the last twoevents.”
The next race will be in Fuji on 30-31st of august.
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