PAIR OF TOP 12 FINISHES FOR IDAFAR AT INCIDENT-PACKED PAUL RICARDMenasheh Idafar emerged from two incident-packed, and wildly unpredictable, Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International Series races at Paul Ricard in France, Sunday, 17th July, with a pair of very hard-fought top 12 results.As during Saturday's 16th round, until his unfortunate exhaust failurebecame apparent, the 20-year-old performed very well indeed in bothencounters and certainly deserved at least one points finish from theweekend.The beginning to round 17 was nothing short of chaotic after a car stalledand the lights sequence on the gantry over the start/finish straight didn'tmake it clear whether the action had been aborted or whether racing wasunderway. Some drivers thought the former was the case while others believedthe race to have started, leading to unsurprising multi-car contact.Menasheh was one of those able to avoid any issues and so at the re-start heprofited from three cars ahead being removed the equation. Nonetheless, hedelivered a strong opening to end lap one in 15th position just 0.2 secondsbehind team-mate Yann Cunha and by the end of the second tour he was up into13th place - all after having started at the back of the grid due toSaturday's retirement.With the race distance limited to just six laps after the earlier problems,there wasn't a great deal of time available for Menasheh to try and make hisway much further up the order but he did grab 12th place from Adderly Fongon the third tour to cap a highly impressive drive.The British-born Bahraini made a great start to round 18, for which hequalified in 12th position, but some early contact delayed him and also ledto steering damage which compromised his pace and turning ability intoright-handers.
Several spinners at the start resulted in the Safety Car being deployed forquite some time with the action not truly getting underway until lap six.Running in 13th place, Menasheh piled pressure onto Pipo Derani and thengained two positions on lap seven when Derani and Kotaro Sakurai ran wideand dropped back.Although slipping to 13th position as the race passed mid-distance, theT-Sport driver continued to fight hard and ran close behind title contenderLucas Foresti. On lap 12 though, contact between the pair resulted in adamaged floor to Menasheh's Dallara-Volkswagen and although able to recoverhe lost a lot of time. Even so, a couple of incidents during the closingstages enabled him to regain 12th."I made a very good start to the second race but there was contact from(Carlos) Huertas and that damaged my steering, I couldn't put enough lock onin the right-hand corners so that made things really tough", explainedMenasheh, "Then, after the thing with (Lucas) Foresti, the floor got damagedbut at least I could continue and we made the finish."The first race today was really messy at the start, my pace wasn't so goodbut we did manage to come through to a decent enough result. It's been atough weekend but Spa is next and I'm really looking forward to that, wewere good there last year in the National Class car so hopefully we can havea good run this time in the A Class."The seventh event of the 2011 Cooper Tires British Formula 3 InternationalSeries, rounds 19, 20 and 21, will take place at Belgium's Spa-Francorchampson Friday, 29th July, and Saturday, 30th July.
