FRv6 Donnington!

[Kicking-back]

Good show for Sharp

[beastie]

and also just to point out to everyone race 1 will be live on brithish eurosport at 15.15 good old scottish time tomorrow(26/06/04).

[beastie]

yeah kicking-back ryan was fastest in free practise aswell!!

[Kicking-back]

Must remember to watch that!

British Eurosport has been quite poor with the SRW this year - chopping and changing all over the place

[beastie]

just noticed aswell that qualifying was done in the sun on a dry track and you know what the weathers like over here it will probably be pouring with rain by time tomorrows race comes!!

[Kicking-back]

Adds to the entertainment

[beastie]

hell yeah!!!!

[beastie]

qualifying results for race 2 on sunday are as follows:

1 6 Robert BELL (David Price Racing ) 11 00:01:24.462
2 4 Ryan SHARP (Jenzer Motorsport ) 11 00:01:24.468 +0.006
3 15 Andrea BELICCHI (AFC Motorsport ) 11 00:01:24.739 +0.277
4 1 Neel JANI (DAMS ) 9 00:01:24.749 +0.287
5 27 Memo ROJAS (Telmex DAMS ) 11 00:01:24.910 +0.448
6 11 Christian MONTANARI (Victory Engineering SpA ) 10 00:01:24.936 +0.474
7 5 Hayanari SHIMODA (David Price Racing ) 14 00:01:25.068 +0.606
8 20 Alx DANIELSSON (SRTS ) 13 00:01:25.114 +0.652
9 19 Cesar CAMPANICO (Cram Competition ) 12 00:01:25.146 +0.684
10 7 Giorgio MONDINI (EuroInternational ) 13 00:01:25.257 +0.795
11 16 Matteo MENEGHELLO (AFC Motorsport ) 11 00:01:25.260 +0.798
12 50 Stefano PROETTO (EuroInternational ) 14 00:01:25.298 +0.836
13 18 David MARTINEZ LEON (Cram Competition ) 13 00:01:25.380 +0.918
14 2 Bruce LORGERE ROUX (DAMS ) 10 00:01:25.451 +0.989
15 12 Sven BARTH (Interwetten.com ) 12 00:01:25.572 +1.110
16 10 Danien PASINI (Victory Engineering SpA ) 10 00:01:25.613 +1.151
17 21 Edward SANDSTROM (SRTS ) 15 00:01:25.677 +1.215
18 14 Jaap VAN LAGEN (Interwetten.com ) 14 00:01:26.011 +1.549
19 9 Ivan BELLAROSA (Avelon Formula ) 13 00:01:26.893 +2.431

should be a good race with the top 14 cars being separated by less than a second!!

[Kicking-back]

A British 1-2 on the grid.

Lets hope that follows through to the race result.

Only 6 one thousandths separate them!

[Kicking-back]

Race 1 is live now on British Eurosport.

Sadly Tony Delahunty's doing the commentary.

[rdjones]

Just watched the race on Eurosport and I think it had just about everything. It wasn't a bad race. Let's hope the racing is as good 2morrow.

[verglas]

so what happened??

[Kicking-back]

Win for Belicchi, ahead of Bell.

Started dry, became wet - Jani's team messed up the timing of their change to wet tires.

Very scrappy race from Sharp but he finished 3rd.

Daniellson spun out of the lead.

[codename_47]

Wow, that race certainly was exciting! (Well, until the pit stops, anyway!)

Three wide down the starkey's straight!
Belicchi went from 3rd to 1st in one straight, only to have Bell outbrake him into the chicane!

Great moment!

[Mackmot]

Why has Ryan been knocked back 40 seconds, 20 second each for 2 decisions?

[Paul Rayner]

One was passing under yellows, the other a collision with a competitor. Haven't talked to Ryan about it yet though.

Not as bad as the morning's Eurocup 2000 race though - 3 disqualified, 19 given a 20 second penalty!!!

[Kicking-back]

Race 2 result

Belicchi, Montanari, Rojas


Sharp 11th, Bell 14th

[Pete Fenelon]

First time I've seen the FR V6s "in real life" - my god, they're killing cars that cute off?

They really do look like they're built to at least F3000 standards of quality, and what I saw of the build quality of them in the paddock makes F3 and "cooking" two-litre FRenault look very bush-league. It also helps that they sound absolutely great too - there is always something about a six, vee or straight, and these cars definitely have it.

Certainly the nicest one-make single-seaters I've seen close-up, although I haven't been to an F3000 race since it became a GP support series and have missed the last couple of generations of Lolas.

It amazes me that
(A) this series didn't catch on like mad
and
(B) Renault are abandoning it completely - although it's perhaps a bit too close to Dallara-Nissan for D-N's comfort!

This would be an absolute stonker of a top National formula if they could keep the costs right...

[Kicking-back]

Pete, the current batch of cars is going off to America next year to run a Renault V6 series there.

The replacement series next year will be great too, I reckon.

And I agree, those cars are what F3 should be.

[Gaz]

Absolutely agree with the comments above, Renault V6 is a real race series!

The cars look fab, sound fab and race fab! You could tell by the number of F3 boys hanging around them that they certainly captured the attention!

They were really a breath of fresh air from some of the other boring, monotenous single-seater formulae (*cough* Dallara-Nissan *cough*) and I can't believe that at the end of the year they're going to be canned!

Lets hope GP2 comes up with something along this championships lines! The fact that the cars seemed to have more power than grip made them look a handful to drive and they certainly didn't look as dull and on rails as 3000s do!

Super racing, super formula!

[Kicking-back]

At the moment the market place is crowded with F3000, Dallara Nissan, Euro 3000 and FRV6.

All of these struggle to fill a grid.

Next year there will be the 600hp GP2, and the 400hp Dallara-Renault.

Should be good.

[RTH]

Tony Delahunty and Carlton Kirby together are the nightmare commentary team , - neither of them can or will pronounce ANYONE'S name even remotely correctly - despite the fact , they MUST have heard other people say the names before . - they make even ITV seem good in comparison and that really is saying something.

[garcon]

What perfect timing for a rain shower! We were at Donny Sunday, primarily to watch the GTs, but hung around for the FRV6 - especially after it started raining - you can't beat a bit of single seater mayhem in the rain...

The shower had actually passed by the time the race started, so it started wet but there was soon a dry line appearing. We watched from the infield overlooking Craner/Old Hairpin up to McLeans. Lap 1 down Craner was hilarious! First three cars went well wide at Old Hairpin losing four or five places, and three or four cars down the field span - each one in sympathy with the next - and one not content with one perfect 360 managed another trying to get going again!

One car even managed a perfect pirrouette going up the hill to McLeans!

All great entertainment, though I'm glad the rain stayed away allowing a dry line to develop and a reasonably sensible race to unfold.

It's a shame if the series is going to be canned, but maybe it shows we should be looking to consolidate the single seater series - a few well supported series at distinct levels might help. As an interested but fairly clueless onlooker, it gets confusing when you see Formula Renault V6, Formula Renault and F3 on the same card...

Also a shame that by the time the F3 race came up yesterday, most people (including me) had already gone home!

[Pete Fenelon]

Originally posted by Kicking-back
At the moment the market place is crowded with F3000, Dallara Nissan, Euro 3000 and FRV6.

All of these struggle to fill a grid.

Next year there will be the 600hp GP2, and the 400hp Dallara-Renault.

Should be good.

Should be - F3000 has died the death and the current round of driver transfers and withdrawals remind me of F3000 back in '89 when it was more interesting trying to work out who was going to turn up (or how they were going to try to nobble Reynard) than most of the races were

400bhp/600bhp/900bhp is a good "ladder", now something around 250-300 would be a great F3 to slot in between baby cars like FBMW and "proper" racing cars - hark, do I hear the sound of an unrestricted ETCC engine? ;p

[Kicking-back]

I think Renault's view is that there won't be a need to do F3, because you can go from Formula Renault up to Dallara Renault and then on to GP2.