Practice pace fails to translate into points after accident in France20-year-old Californian unleashes street-fighting skills at PauJagonya Ayam with Carlin ace targets qualified success at Monza

Gustavo Menezes was left ruing a missed opportunity in the fiercely-contested FIA Formula 3 European Championship at Pau, as his front-running form and podium-challenging pace throughout practice were unfortunately undone by an accident that scuppered his weekend hopes. The talented young American is a self-confessed fan of street circuits, whose punishing and unforgiving nature permits no margin for error and demands both maximum commitment and pinpoint precision. With no such thing as run-off areas, drivers need to be on-the-edge without going over it. What’s more, with only ten points-scoring positions available in a tremendously high-calibre, 34-strong field – composed of the indisputable crème de la crème of up-and-coming open-wheel stars, with European F3 widely regarded as the toughest junior single-seater series on the planet – more than two-thirds of the grid will always end up disappointed. At Pau, unusually, Menezes was amongst them. That said, the California native certainly got off to an excellent start around the tight-and-twisty, 2.76km track situated at the foot of the Pyrenees in southern France, rapidly settling into a rhythm during the wet first practice session and topping the timesheets in his group until right at the end, when he was narrowly pipped to early honours. Menezes maintained that scintillating speed in FP2, lapping fourth-quickest before aquaplaning into the barriers at the end of the start/finish straight as the rain intensified. A sizeable impact, he was thankfully discharged from the Pau medical centre with no injuries, but his Jagonya Ayam with Carlin mechanics faced a race against time to repair the battered-and-bruised #4 Volkswagen-powered Dallara for qualifying. With overtaking opportunities at a premium around street circuits, annexing a good grid position is vital. Betraying no physical ill-effects from his practice smash, the 20-year-old was immediately on the leading pace once more in Q1, featuring inside the top three in his group until a late red flag allowed the track surface to dry out and meant the best times would all be set at the end. Finding himself caught up in traffic once the action resumed, Menezes slipped to an unrepresentative 13th in the pecking order for race one, when he palpably had the potential to be troubling the front-runners. Worse still, he would place a lowly 21st on the starting grid for race two and 18th for race three – unaccustomed territory indeed. The former Jim Russell Driver Scholarship Award holder spent the majority of the opening encounter duelling with Felix Rosenqvist – a winner at Pau in 2014 – until their scrap culminated in contact on the last lap, dropping Menezes to 15th at the chequered flag. In race two, he then underlined his experience as a European F3 sophomore by gaining no fewer than seven places, posting lap times as fast as the sextet of drivers disputing the runner-up spot along the way and getting to within sniffing distance of the points following a gritty effort. A bright start to race three subsequently came to nought when the WH Sports Group protégé collided with the barriers on lap five, leaving him to reflect upon his first non-scoring weekend of the 2015 campaign, when the driver with whom he had been nip-and-tuck throughout practice – Jake Dennis – tallied a hat-trick of pole positions and brace of race victories. Despite the disappointment, Menezes retained his top ten position in the title standings ahead of Monza in Italy at the end of the month – where he is determined to fight back.“The weekend started off really well,” he mused. “We were quick from the word ‘go’, and it was great to be so far up the order in both free practice sessions. Unfortunately, we had some issues with the radio communication in FP2 which meant I wasn’t receiving messages, and towards the end, it began raining heavily and I didn’t hear the team calling me in. Next thing I knew, I hit a puddle at the kink heading into Turn One, which sent me aquaplaning into the wall at pretty high speed.“It was a big accident and did a lot of damage to the car, and the Jagonya Ayam with Carlin boys performed an incredible job to put it all back in one piece in the short two-hour gap before qualifying. It was a massive team effort from everybody involved.“We went out for Q1 and set a ‘purple’ sector straightaway, which was really encouraging, and we kept pushing and were consistently inside the top three until the late red flag. That allowed the track to dry out a bit, and we didn’t manage the traffic as well as we should have done after the re-start, which dropped us down the timing screens. That was really frustrating, because we clearly had the speed to be much higher up.“With qualifying for races two and three being the first dry session of the weekend, the track was quite ‘green’ and the car picked up a fair bit of oversteer. I think the pace was there, but I wasn’t as comfortable as I had been earlier on and I struggled to extract the maximum out of it – and the problem with a street circuit like Pau is that you can’t really do very much once Friday is over.“Race one was a constant battle to keep Rosenqvist behind – every time I came back onto the pit straight, he was right there under my gearbox and poised to attack. We were much more competitive in race two; we were quicker than the cars around us and I made up seven positions from my grid slot, which is quite something at Pau, but that still didn’t earn us any points and then race three obviously ended prematurely in the wall.“When you think that we were trading fastest times with Jake during practice and what he went on to achieve, it goes to show what might have been without the accident in FP2 and how quickly your entire weekend can be turned on its head. Everything stemmed from just one mistake, but you can’t afford to make any mistakes around a street circuit, because they will cost you.“Looking forward, we must turn the negatives into positives. Our racecraft is strong, so as soon as we crack qualifying – which we haven’t done so far this season – we’ll be in really good shape and the results will come. It’s essential that we are on top of our game weekend-long, and whilst it’s definitely possible to overtake at Monza with its long straights, hopefully we won’t need to make up quite so much ground there...”