In Love With Formula 1

Part 91

I was in Barcelona for my first race ever in a formula 3 car, I had this sense of calm over me, I had done as much preparation as possible, we tested here so I knew the track, and I had a good car underneath me. 

I had completed all the necessary safety tests and was technically ready to race, this was an important opportunity for me, many people called it unfair for me to get the jump from karts straight into an F3 car instead of the Formula Regionals or Formula Renault drivers getting a seat, so I knew I needed to make it count. 

It was the Friday, so I had a practice session and qualifying for the final race on Sunday morning, because it was with the F1 race weekend it was extremely early starts, 6:55am I was at the track getting in to my race suit ready for practice at 8am.

'Good luck Izzie, you'll smash it' was a text I got from Daniel a long with a load of stupid gifs

'Have fun out there, pole is the goal though' Lando texted me 

'Good luck, it's way too early for racing' Carlos said to which I laughed.

I had my headphones on, courtesy of Daniel and his sponsors with Beats I was able to get some noise cancelling ones. I was just listening to my music, it wasn't necessarily 'race' music, it was just some of my favourites. 

I did a bit of stretching and cracked almost every bone in my body, my neck being the main one, I probably shouldn't do it but it just released tension in that area. 

"Ready to go?" My race engineer asked as I walked over and took one side of the headphone off my ear

"It is only practice" 

"Still, important data to collect"

"I know I know, what's the plan?"

"Go a few laps qualifying pace and then I'll give you an average race pace to follow"

"Okay"

I took my headphones off and put my helmet on wit the balaclava on underneath, my hair was tightly braided to the back of my head so they wouldn't budge with me taking my helmet on and off.

"How's the radio?" Tonio asked

"Oh you know could be playing some better music"

"Not the point but I can hear you and I'm guessing you can hear me"

"Unfortunately"

"Well pitlane opens in 20 seconds, you ready"

"Fuck yeh"

All the cars pulled out in formation and we made our way on to the track, I needed to make some space for me to do a few laps of quali pace with as little traffic as possible.

"18 second gap to car in front, start pace this lap" 

"Got it"

I gripped slightly tighter on the steering wheel as I made my way out of the final chicane and on to the main straight to start my quali pace laps.

After 4 fast laps, I was top of the sheets, I didn't feel the need to do a cool down lap in between and it showed, I improved slightly each lap as the tyres wore down and my confidence grew.

"Good stuff Izzie, box this lap we'll change the tyres and you'll go out for a race pace stint"

"Yep sounds good box this lap"

I drove in to the pits to my box and was shown some data as my car was serviced before heading back out on to track.

My race pace was a good collection of data, it wasn't necessarily about times, but how the car reacted to longer periods of time, there were no mandatory pit stops so tyre management was a skill I needed to learn quickly otherwise I would suffer in the races.