If a record existed for overtaking manoeuvres in a single weekend of the FIA Formula 3 European Championship, then Alex Lynn probably broke it in the latest round at Austrias Red Bull Ring.
A mysterious grip problem struck the ace Italian Prema Powerteam squad that Lynn drives for during wet qualifying, leaving Alex and his team-mates with a tough job to do in the dry races. Yet over the course of the three races Lynn made up a total of 36 places to grab some useful points and consolidate fourth place in the championship table.
It all unravelled in qualifying, the 19-year-old explained. You always put yourself in a difficult situation when you start P17, P15 and P21and it was especially disappointing after the previous round at Brands Hatch, where I was on pole for all three races.
We had absolutely no grip. I was on a lap that would have put me sixth on the grid for race one, and although I caught traffic towards the end of the lap I couldnt blame it on thatI just couldnt put a whole lap together because of the grip, and the whole team was struggling.
Lynn then stalled at the start of race one, and got away 28th and last, but his Mercedes-powered Dallara soon went on a charge. By lap seven he was amazingly in the top 10, and by the finish of the race he was seventh.
The car was really good and I was driving it well, said Alex. I overtook a lot of people and it was good to get in the points, especially so high up them. But just as with the other races, it was case of imagining what could have happened if Id started higher up.
With the rest of the field getting up to speed on the dry track, passing was more difficult in race two. Lynn got tagged by his ex-Formula Renault team-mate Mitchell Gilbert just past the halfway point, before finally passing the Australian, and then he came up on his ex-British F3 team-mate Pipo Derani with a few laps to go. Alex passed the Brazilian into Turn 2, but then Derani got a run on him down the next straight and the two cars tangled, sending the Briton into a rear-end impact with the tyre wall.
Everyone was going a lot faster in this race as they got used to the dry track conditions, said Lynn. The accident with Pipo was deemed a racing incident and it was one of those things really. We were only fighting for one point, so I hardly lost anything in the accident.
The third race provided another spectacular race into the points for Alex, who finished eighth from 21st on the grid and perfected an outside move into Turn 3 that worked on several rivals.
I was running a lot less wing than the others, he said. My engineer Jeff [Jean-Francois Levere] took that decision and, although it made the car slower over a lap, it meant I was quicker in the important parts of the track to overtake people. I was really fast on the first two straights, and that enabled me to outbrake others on the outside into Turn 3. It was a lot of fun!
There is now something of a gap in the F3 calendar. Teams will test for two days at the Red Bull Ring this week, and then its a wait until the prestigious non-championship Masters of F3 at the Dutch circuit of Zandvoort.
The whole Prema team are really disappointed with the results they got, but Im happy I did the best job I could from where I started, said Lynn, who is a member of the MSAs Team UK and the British Racing Drivers Clubs SuperStars programme. I was driving well, we were fast, and we think we know what the problem was in qualifyingIm sure well all be frustrated when we test there this week and prove to ourselves what we believe to be correct, but it will also be a relief!
