AT SILVERSTONE GP
Will Bratt made his long-awaited track return at Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit yesterday, Wednesday, 25th March, by rejoining his former Formula Renault UK team Apotex Scorpio Motorsport during an official championship test session.
Agreeing to run with the Loughborough squad to assist with data and set-up work, yesterday’s outing saw the 20-year-old end the day a superb fourth fastest overall with a best lap of 1m 47.968 seconds (106.49mph) to underline his true quality.
Lapping the 3.2-mile Grand Prix track a mere three 10ths of a second away from the outright pace, Will’s performance was all the more impressive considering it was his first appearance in a race car in almost five months. Will’s most recent track outing prior to yesterday’s test was his GP2 Series test run at Paul Ricard in France last November.
“It was good to be back on track and I enjoyed working with Tony (Trevor) and Jon (Pettitt), Apotex Scorpio is a great team”, commented Will, “We were more than happy with our dry weather pace, fourth overall was a great result and especially so considering I haven’t been in a car for five months and the tyres we were using were pretty old – we didn’t have chance to run on new ones.
“The afternoon sessions were affected by rain and it was difficult to tell exactly where we were as there were a lot of stoppages. In the end, I only had 11 laps but the main aim was to help the team with set-up work. As far as the 2009 season goes for me, we’re unsure what we’re doing at the moment but we hope to be able to announce something in due course.”
Since his front-running GP2 test outing at the tail-end of 2008 where he emerged second fastest against a whole array of category regulars, Will has been concentrating on his final few months of study at Oxford University.
Having debuted in the FIAT Spanish Formula 3 Championship last year, after three successful seasons in Formula Renault UK, Will is looking to move further up the single-seater ladder this season and had planned to make his race debut in Formula One support category GP2.
Due to conflicts with his Oxford commitments though, the British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) Rising Star has had to look at alternative championships for 2009 and is currently weighing up several options on the international stage.
