Fresh tyres and a cool head netted Gabriel Dias his first win of the Cooper Tires British F3 International series this afternoon at Hockenheim in Germany, the Brazilian Hitech driver recovering from a slowish getaway which dropped him to third on the opening lap to claim victory in the 11th round by a 1.1-second margin.
Dias had endured all sorts of pre-race dramas: his car’s clutch had had to be changed after problems in the morning race, and then his race kit and helmet were trapped in the team truck behind a jammed door until moments before the off.
Given these dilemmas his relatively slow getaway from second on the grid could be forgiven. It allowed pole-sitter Oli Webb to rocket into a handsome lead for Fortec and Carlin’s Adriano Buzaid to slot past his countryman to take up third.
But once off and running Dias’s car was clearly the class of the field. He closed down Buzaid over the course of the opening three laps and then sliced down Adriano’s inside at the hairpin to lift second next time around. Webb was by this stage 2.1s to the good, but Gabriel’s wings gave him the edge he needed to close the gap, and by the seventh tour the two cars were nose to tail.
Dias swooped on the eighth lap of what turned out to be a 13-lap race, again down the inside into the hairpin, to snatch away the lead from a helpless Webb.
“We changed the clutch after what happened in race one,” said Dias, “and this clutch was a bit more difficult for me. I didn’t have a great start, and that was why I lost one position. But the car was just so good… so good, that I could catch the guys in front easily. It was so superior I could just drive straight past them. Great work from the team.”
Added Webb: “We knew that Dias would be quicker. He had newer tyres than us because we have opted to save ours for the third race, but we didn’t think he’d be that quick…”
Buzaid was less than two seconds behind the winner for a fine podium finish, maintaining his 100 per cent scoring rate in the process, with Jay Bridger a best-yet fourth for the Litespeed team. Jay had started third and, though he could not keep Buzaid at bay, managed to hold off championship leader Jean-Eric Vergne for the duration, despite the Frenchman’s best efforts to pass.
Behind Vergne, in sixth, was James Calado’s Racing Steps car, with Will Buller resisting race-long pressure from Jazeman Jaafar to hold on to seventh. Rupert Svendsen-Cook and Raikkonen Robertson’s Carlos Huertas followed Jaafar home to complete the top 10.
James Cole started well up the grid thanks to his ninth-place finish in round 10, many places ahead of his T-Sport team-mate and National Class rival Menasheh Idafar. Cole duly won – his seventh class victory – but was less than a second ahead of Idafar at the flag.
Cooper Tires British F3 International Series
Round 11 Hockenheim 29/5/2010 13 laps = 36.95 miles
Provisional results
International Class
1 Gabriel DIAS / BRA, Hitech Dallara-Volkswagen 20m 54.072s / 106.06mph
