Trouble-Free Start To Donington GP Weekend For Idafar

Dallara-Volkswagen driver Menasheh Idafar got his preparations for this weekend's Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International Series races at Donington Park Grand Prix Circuit off to a trouble-free start today, Thursday, 22nd September, during official testing at the East Midlands venue. In this morning's opening 55-minute session on the 2.48-mile track, the 20-year-old posted a best lap of 1m24.906 seconds (105.46mph) in his T-Sport machine to go 14th on the timesheets and 0.4 seconds shy of the top 10.Session two this afternoon, which took place in dry conditions like the first, delivered improvements for each of the 21 drivers and Menasheh was able to slice 0.9 seconds off his morning best with a lap of 1m24.062 seconds (106.52mph) to move up to 13th quickest.Although edging the British-born Bahraini a 10th of a second nearer the overall top 10 for the day, he did end the test disappointed not to be further up the order. Now, he'll be working hard with the team engineers to find more pace ahead of qualifying and the first race of the weekend which takes place on Saturday, 24th September."Overall it was an ok day but we're not where we wanted to be", said Menasheh, "We're going to look through all of the data to see where we can make some improvements with the car and see where I'm losing time. Hopefully we can make some good changes before qualifying on Saturday."The British F3 runners will be back in action at 10.40 on Saturday morning for the all-important qualifying session with the first race of the weekend at Donington, round 25, scheduled to get underway at 15.40. On Sunday, 25th September, round 26 will begin at 10.15 while round 27 will follow at 13.40.Live timing of all of the weekend's action will be available online at tsl-timing.com

Provisional 2011 Cooper Tires British F3 International Series Standings (after Rd24):=14th Menasheh Idafar & Hywel Lloyd, 33pts


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