Teamcraft Motorsport, a new team arrived on the British F3 scene today. The team was revealed for the first time at Silverstone today, shaking down its Mercedes-powered Mygale chassis on the National circuit with Formula Renault champion, Dean Smith, behind the wheel.
The Silverstone-based F3 team may be new to the series, but the people behind the venture have a wealth of experience and are set to be a front-running outfit. Technical Director, James Robinson and Team Manager, Les Jones, form a formidable partnership to lead the team. These two, together with John Surtees as advisor to the team, and additional staffing which includes top level, highly experienced, engineers and mechanics, will contest the British F3 International Series with a planned 2-car assault on this prestigious championship.
Robinson says of the new venture, “We’ve brought together a first-class team of people and believe that with our experience and expertise we can be a major player in British F3. The Mercedes-Mygale package, although unfancied by many, is already proven as a race winner and in our hands we are confident we can be competitive right from the start. We’ve started our programme today with the shakedown of the first car and by lunchtime we had already completed forty laps.
“Dean has been very helpful, showing great maturity in his approach and providing us with good feedback. Obviously it’s our first time out having basically put a new car together from scratch, so it’s all new for us today, but we’ve ran reliably in the morning’s wet conditions and drier afternoon weather. We’re not able to gauge our performance at the moment as the real competition is all in Macau at the moment, so we’ll have to wait until we get out on a track with them. Our development programme starts now, so we’ll be putting all our efforts into extracting all the potential performance in the car over the coming months.”
Robinson has an excellent track record in British F3, engineering Mike Conway to his championship title, whilst also bringing over 25 years of Formula 1 experience, including seven world championship titles with some of the luminaries of the sport: Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.
“We’ve set out to be winners and aim to do this within the first year, not just targeting a race or two, but to be challenging for the championship. We’ve put together a package which can deliver the results, not only in terms of the car and engine but also with the people and the infrastructure. It’s a very exciting new project for us and we’re looking forward to making our mark next season.”
