ADD Motorsports driver John Bryant-Meisner was pleased with his progress in what was a difficult outing in the GP3 Series.

Results at Monza didn’t paint the whole picture of a weekend that saw the racer’s practice time shortened considerably due to a mistake beyond his control.

And he felt two 17-place finishes as he continued to get to grips with the new car and tyres, was a satisfying return in the circumstances.

He said: “The results don’t show the whole picture, I learnt a lot this weekend and the pace was there.

“It was a difficult weekend all in all and it was made a lot harder by only getting 15 minutes of practice time in.

“I was going to do a practice start and stalled and there’s a rule if you stall outside the pits on the track you’re not allowed to restart.

“But it was the marshals who pushed me out of the way of the path of the ambulance and onto the track, which meant I wasn’t allowed to restart. It was a mistake, but there wasn’t anything I could do, but it meant I hardly got any practice time.

“So I think I did OK overall.”

The Swedish racer had a problem with the car’s brakes during qualifying. The team bedded in the brakes and pads at the same time and the brakes weren’t quite ready.

Added to this, the fact that he also had to try to get used to the track and the car after the shortened practice time and it is clear why qualifying was more difficult than it should have been.

He was left disappointed with a 21st place finish, but satisfied he did the best he could have.

John got off to a good start in Race One – but went on to the gravel while jostling for position with another driver and lost a few places.

He felt he was a bit too cautious for the bulk of the race but as he got into the race started pushing harder and was just three-tenths off the pack’s pace by the end of the race when he finished 17th.

He got off to a decent start in Race Two, but when another driver in front of him didn’t brake into a corner as he was expecting, it left him having to turn onto the grass and he hit the foam.

It damaged the front wing of the car, lost him some places and left him with under-steer problems.

But he managed to fight his way back and ended up 17th again.

He added: “It’s still a big learning process for me at the moment, so I’m not unhappy with how it went.

“GP3 is a lot harder and the tyres take a lot of getting used to. You also don’t get much time in the car, so you have to be perfect pretty much straight away. Obviously I had even less time than normal because of the problems during practice.

“But it’s a really good place to be and I want to keep improving and be in a good place and ready for next season.

“That’s hopefully what the rest of this season is all about.”