ADD Motorsports driver Mitchell Gilbert was satisfied with a solid start in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship opener.

The 19-year-old put in some excellent qualifying times at Silverstone, so was disappointed not to be able to carry these performances through into the races.

But after six months since his last race, he is confident there’s a lot more to come with new team Fortec Motorsports.

And he believes he has seen enough from the first round of the Championship to know points are just around the corner.

He said: “It was amazing to be back out there. It was my first race since October, so it’s been a long time coming.

“We wanted better results so it was slightly disappointing, but we have seen enough to feel we are not far off.

“The speed has been there, if we can put everything together, we’ll be really fast and will be at the right end.”

The Australian racer – now living in Twickenham - finished 17th, 10th and 9th in qualifying, but with a few tweaks to the car, could have been even higher.

Some car issues in the first qualifier saw him struggle slightly, but if they had been rectified the times would have been good enough for an eighth or ninth place finish.

After changes were made, his times improved drastically to the point where Mitchell’s 10th place finish could have even been a second or third position if everything had gone his way.

Mitchell started Race 1 in 17th place and for his first race in six months did well to move up four places through to 13th.

He started 10th in Race 2, but had dropped back to 18th on the first lap. However, by the end of the race he had pulled it back to 16th.

Another unusually poor start in Race 3 saw Mitchell drop back early on from 9th to 12th. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the opportunity to see where he would have finished after a collision ended his race early.

He continued: “Race 1 was OK, but on Race 2 I just got swallowed up along with a group and got in the wrong position.

“My car didn’t seem as good on the cold tyres so I couldn’t really move forward quickly.

“We’d made some changes for Race 3 and if I’d got a better start, we could have been up there.

“But the collision was a really disappointing way to finish the weekend. A group of us were all an inch away from each other going into a corner and collided.

“It was particularly annoying as we didn’t get the chance to see if the changes we had made from Race 2 would have made a difference.”

Despite the disappointing end to the weekend, Mitchell, who is back with Fortec Motorsports for his second year in the Championship, has seen enough to know with a bit of luck and more time on track he can be where he wants to be.

He added: “I almost forgot how stressful it can be. There’s hardly any time to sort anything out, you have to deal with problems on the track and between races really quickly.

“From a personal performance, I need better starts and we will try to work on these before the next race.

“The team will sit down and look through the data from the weekend to work out where we went wrong and where we can improve and we will go through all this

as we always do.

“But I’m definitely confident if everything comes together we will be really fast and will be in the mix. Nothing I’ve seen in my first weekend has changed my mind.

“I’m now looking forward to getting back out there and getting some points.”

The next round takes place at the beginning of next month at Hockenheim.