Banbury's Will Bratt aims to keep up his bid for the FIA F2 championship title this weekend when rounds seven and eight take place at the famous Nurburgring in Germany.
Last weekend, he celebrated his maiden win and third place at Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium to move up fourth in the standings, 41 points behind championship leader Mirko Bortolotti, with ten rounds to go.
In Saturday’s rain-hit fifth round race, the 23-year-old started fifth on the grid, but swept into second on the run down the hill towards Eau Rouge before taking the lead at the exit of Les Combes.
Bratt then built on his lead, before taking the chequered flag on lap 16 some 2.5 seconds clear.
The next day, he kept up the momentum by claiming his first pole position with a lap of 2mins 07.495 secs – the fastest-ever F2 lap of the 4.35-mile circuit.
Initially, Bratt got away well in Sunday’s race, only to slip back to fifth as Christopher Zanella leap-frogged him into fourth.
Bratt was involved in a great battle with Miki Monras – the pair circulating nose-to-tail – before the Oxfordshire ace took advantage of a mistake by Tobias Hegewald to move up to third.
Monras remained a constant threat to Bratt, who held on to take his second podium of the weekend and a third rostrum visit of the season.
“It’s fantastic to get the first win, it’s definitely been a long time coming”, said Bratt.
“My car was a bit of a handful during the first half of Sunday’s race.
“Monras put me under some pretty serious pressure, but I used my boosts to stay ahead.
“It’s ok for the championship, but you always want to win, especially when you start from pole, but you need to get a better first lap.”
Bratt added: “It was fantastic to get my first pole, I hooked up a good lap but I could have gone faster still.
“With Saturday having been wet, the set-up we used was based on the data from Friday’s dry practice.
“It’s been a very strong weekend though all in all, I’m really happy to have backed up Saturday’s win with another podium today.”
STANDINGS.
(top five).
1 M Bortolotti, 109pts, 2 Z Christopher 104, 3 M Miki 78, 4 W Bratt 68.
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