The latest rounds of the British F3 International Series took place at Thruxton, the UK’s fastest circuit and this was Max’s first ever races at the Hampshire venue.

His first look at the ultra-fast track was during Friday’s free practice and Max improved his lap times in each of the sessions as he became more familiar with the sweeping curves of the airfield venue.

One of the tricks to a quick lap time at Thruxton is to get a tow around the flat out part of the circuit up to the final chicane. This is impossible to pre-plan without an obliging team mate and Max, being in a single car team was always going to struggle in qualifying without the benefit of a tow.

So as the two sessions unfolded on Saturday Max was finding it hard. The car was handling well in the first session, but without a tow he was 20th fastest. In the second session Max still didn’t get a tow, but his job was made even harder by  lack of grip at the rear of his Dallara causing massive oversteer and 21st was the best he could manage.

“I’m really disappointed” Max said after the sessions, “That’s a long way down the grid and even though I’ve never been here before, I was expecting a better performance than that. We haven’t got the car right yet and even without a tow I should be higher. I think I’ve suffered a lot more here being the only car in the team and it’s taking us too long to find the right set up.”

Max got off the line well at the start of the first race and held his position over the first few laps. His position improved with the inevitable retirements through collisions ahead of him, but he couldn’t challenge for position as the performance of his car was causing him problems;

“I was really suffering in a straight line,” Max explained later, “For some reason I could match the cars in front through the corners but they would pull away on the run up to the chicane.”

A safety car period closed the field back up halfway through the race and although Max had been in a safe 17th   place before the safety car came out, at the restart he was passed on the high speed run up to the chicane again and again to eventually finish a very frustrated 20th.

The Arena Motorsport team tried a very different set up for the second race as they attempted to cure the lack of straight line speed, but the set up was still far from where they hoped for. Max was obviously finding the car difficult to drive right from the start and his frustrating race was brought to a premature end when he went off, avoiding another car that had almost hit him through the complex. Max was understandably annoyed;

“Stupid!” was his assessment immediately after the race, “ It was Victor Jensen who had spun and he just tried to rejoin without paying any attention and would have driven straight into the side of me if I hadn’t swerved to miss him.”

Unfortunately as Max took avoiding action he was forced onto the grass, lost control and collided with the tyre wall on the exit of the complex. It had certainly been a frustrating day and is summed up by Arena Motorsport team boss, Mike Earle;

“For various reasons, we didn’t give Max a good car this weekend. I’ve apologised to him and things shouldn’t reflect badly on Max because we never gave him the tools to do the job.”

The team’s attention will be focused on trying to sort out the problems at an official FOTA test at Rockingham on Wednesday and Max, who certainly wont dwell on the weekend’s problems, is looking forward to getting back out and working through a programme of development.