Gilmour Racing Back on the podium

Well it has been a long timebetween drinks for Gilmour Racing, but the team has finally cracked it and is backinto a podium finish in the outright championship class of the 2010 Formula 3Championship. Back on home soil it was the first time F3 have raced on the newtwisty circuit of Morgan Park Qld. It was Gilmour Racing’s second race meetingfor the year in the new 07 chassis so testing limitations saw the team againsearching for the right setup during both practice sessions.  Gilmour’squalifying session started well and completed a lap quick enough to see himadvance to the Top 6 Qualifying shoot out. The next 10 mins would sort out thegrid for race one and driver Chris Gilmour posted a lap quick enough for fourthposition.

Race one saw Gilmour fight hardto hold onto third place, his first outright podium since 2006 in thechampionship class “Wow it’s great to be back on the podium especially so soonwith the new car and with very few laps in the new car it’s a great result forrace one.  Race two saw Gilmour Slip back and finish fourth behind theleaders.  Sunday’s feature race and the weather was good Gilmour startedwith a clear grid in front of him as Tweedie had mechanical issues on the warmup lap.  Off the line Gilmour slipped into third position behind Barker& Evans, from here Chris just held a consistent gap behind the leadersmaintaining third place.  A hard charge late in the race from Tom Tweediesaw Tweedie place his car up the inside into tree corner, the two touchingwheels on the exit as both Gilmour & Tweedie fought hard to keep their positions,hard into turn eight, side by side Gilmour & Tweedie reached the breakingpoint, with very late braking from Gilmour, saw him keep his nose in front, whileTweedie locked up his rears and spun the car sideways. This was enough forGilmour to hold on and take his second third place position finish for theround.  “Yeah what a great round for us two thirds and a fourth it’s agreat result, it was good to be fighting hard with the three top guys” Gilmoursaid at the end of race three.

Gilmour Back At The Creek

With a solid result at roundfive at Morgan Park, Gilmour Racing set their sights at the famous EasternCreek circuit west of Sydney for round six.  Being one of Gilmour’sfavourite tracks the team knew a result should be on the cards.  Duringthe break the team had a number of communications from the previous car ownerteam Fortec in England, to see if we could push some more speed out of the car,so with some minor tweaks and setup changes to the car Gilmour Racing hit thetrack.  Confident after the practice sessions driver Chris Gilmour felt hehad the package underneath him “The car feels so different, you just point andit goes there, it’s a completely different car to last round but feels a lotbetter” Qualifying again saw Gilmour with enough speed to again advancethrough to the “Shoot Out” where he posted a lap placing him into fiveposition.

Race one and Gilmour jumped twopositions of the start placing him fighting for second & third into turn two,a quick late minute pass into the high speed corner of turn one on lap two sawSofi pass and place Gilmour back to fifth position where he finished therace.  Race two & Race three saw a very similar resulted in the teamfinishing fourth in both races.  “Yeah this weekend, we really used it asa test session as we made some major changes to the car, the car felt great butI believe we just need some more track time to really nut out the setup we had,I have no doubt when we do it will be quick and very competitive, but still I'mvery happy with the result”

The team will head to the finalround of the championship which is on the 23/24^th October at SandownMelbourne, a place where back in 2004 Chris Gilmour took out both qualifyingsessions and won both races. “yeah we really like Sandown, it’s a quick trackthat rewards commitment, been six years since winning there last time but wewill do our utmost to be up amongst the front guys for sure”