Britain’s Sean Walkinshaw enjoyed his most successful outing of the season at Jerez in Spain over the weekend, 21st/22nd June, during the third event of the EuroFormula Open – his most competitive qualifying run of the campaign helping to deliver his first double points finish of 2014.
Finishing inside the top 10 in each encounter, with a best result of seventh position in Sunday’s race, the Chipping Norton 20-year-old consolidated his placing of 12th in the outright championship standings as well as his top 10 position in the accompanying Spanish F3 Championship title battle.
“There are lots of positives to take away from Jerez”, reflected Sean, “Two points finishes, the first time this year we’ve done that, and our best qualifying yet shows the progress we’re making. We’ve made good steps forward, especially with the qualifying pace, and the car was good all weekend. I’m happy to have been in the points in both races – hopefully we can take that on to the next round.”
Running consistently during the three pre-event practice sessions, Sean upped his pace significantly in round five qualifying on Saturday morning to deliver a superb season-best performance, lapping an excellent sixth fastest with a time of 1m38.053 seconds (162.573 km/h).
Although making a decent getaway from the line in race one, the Campos Racing driver was held out to dry into the first corner and so was shuffled back to eighth position. Determined to recover ground quickly, his plans of mounting an attack were foiled by a technical issue which rendered the remainder of the race a tough challenge. Nonetheless, Sean battled hard to finish in 10th place.
Round six on Sunday morning was the highlight of the weekend, with the Dallara F312 driver slicing his way through from the sixth row of the grid. Making a good start from 11th position, Sean rapidly made his way into the top 10 before grabbing ninth place on lap two.
Posting competitive lap times, producing pace just 0.3 seconds shy of podium performance, he was able to make his way into seventh position just after mid-distance and from there ran comfortably to the chequered flag on lap 18 almost four seconds clear of his closest rival.
“This weekend did have some bad points as well as good ones, but overall it’s been our strongest performance yet this year”, said the Oxfordshire racer, “Qualifying sixth on the grid for race one was great and we should have been there again for race two, but I got traffic in second qualifying when I was half a second up so that cost us quite badly.
“The technical issue in race one was unfortunate, it was a struggle so I was pretty happy actually to finish P10. Sunday’s race was good and although my start wasn’t brilliant, the first couple of laps were great. After I got up into seventh it was quite a calm race, I just had to be consistent, look after the tyres and bring it home.”
Sean now has just a fortnight to wait until the fourth race meeting of the EuroFormula Open season, rounds seven and eight, which will take place on 5th/6th July at the Hungaroring in Hungary.
Provisional 2014 EuroFormula Open Standings (after Rd6):
12th Sean Walkinshaw, 13pts
Provisional 2014 Spanish F3 Championship Standings (after Rd4):
10th Sean Walkinshaw, 13pts