Team Firstair finished the Formula Renault UK Championship season with Richard Singleton taking a strong top-10 result in the final round on the Brands Hatch Indy circuit.
The underrated North Welsh racer, who has had a very limited campaign in 2010, qualified a fine eighth, just 0.247 seconds away from pole position, and raced well with the pack to take ninth.
That followed on from the day’s opening race, for which Singleton had qualified 15th before racing to 11th.
With Singleton’s track time so limited this season, he was playing catch-up throughout the weekend on a circuit where his rivals tested extensively before the season started. “I’ve not driven on the Indy circuit for two or three years,” he said. “Relatively speaking, compared to the others, we found a lot of speed over the qualifying day. We’ve made big steps forward but the times are so close around here that eighth was the best we could do.”
After making up places in the opening race, Singleton made a good start to run seventh at the beginning of race two. He lost two places to front-running drivers who were recovering from poor qualifying sessions or early incidents, but managed to take ninth.
“I was struggling a bit for speed off the corners and onto the straights,” he said. “I was only a tenth or so slower than the others, but once I’d made one or two mistakes they pulled away.”
Singleton was joined in the team by 18-year-old Argentinian Facundo Conta, who was having his maiden race weekend outside of his home country. Conta has raced in Argentinian Formula Renault, but those cars are completely different to the ones used in Europe, pushing out just 115bhp and with five-speed gearboxes.
Conta had a lot to learn in the seven-speed Barazi-Epsilon racer, but brought his lap times down impressively. He was one second quicker in second qualifying than in the first session, and finished the second race less than half a minute behind the overall race winner, and with a fastest lap time within 0.4 seconds of one of the title contenders. His best result was 14th.
“I have had a lot to learn but I have really enjoyed it,” he said. “This week I’m testing at Brands Hatch, and then for two days at Silverstone, with Team Firstair. I hope to do more tests in the winter and after that race in this championship.”
Firstair team principal Ian Barnwell added: “Richard was a bit unlucky with traffic in qualifying, because on this circuit you finish pretty much where you started. But we’re pleased that he was able to show pretty well. Facundo did a good job and learned all the time, and we’re sure he can make good progress in the tests he has coming up.”
The Formula Renault UK Championship again enjoyed live coverage of its second race at Brands Hatch on ITV4, and was streamed live on itv.com. Action will be shown in the Motorsport UK series, with two repeats each week on ITV4 and one on ITV1. A further showing will be made on the Men & Motors channel. The Motorsport UK audience figure for Formula Renault UK in 2009 was 4,750,000.
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