Fox Motorsport’s Archie Bullard put on a show in at Donington Park last time out, as the Briton recovered from a difficult qualifying to charge through the field.
The 19-year-old started 26th on the grid for race one and pulled off an astonishing 14 overtakes to finish in 12th place, adding nine points to his drivers’ championship tally.
Bullard had started the weekend strongly, fighting in the midfield in the pre-event test sessions and even breaking into the top ten with ninth place in the first session on Friday.
“From the start of the weekend, testing was good and we were close to the top 10,” said Bullard. “Then, we went into qualifying and it really didn’t go our way with P26 and P27.”
The Chelmsford-born driver was caught out by a red flag for an incident during the session, missing out on setting a representative lap time and being forced to line up towards the rear of the grid.
“I was very focused on the starts and middle parts of the races to making up as many positions as possible,” he said. “The Saturday went well – we had 14 overtakes and were P2 rookie.”
It was an exceptional recovery drive to end the Saturday on-track action, but Bullard’s Sunday would not go as smoothly, suffering retirements in both races.
“Looking back at it now, with what happened Sunday, I’m less buzzing than I was on the Saturday,” he said. “It was certainly a good way to end the day on Saturday after such a bad performance in qualifying, [but it] still doesn’t beat the record that I hold of the 15 overtakes at Donington last time!”
Bullard has made a big step forward with his competitiveness in recent rounds, finishing in points-scoring positions in six of his last 12 races, having not scored any points from the opening six races.
“The pace is now competitive,” he said. “It’s just that sometimes things don’t go your way [with] stuff that you can’t control.”
Heading into the season finale at Brands Hatch at the end of the month, Bullard is hoping to make the most of the final round of his maiden single-seater campaign.
“Going into the last round, I’m going to forget everything that has happened and just have fun really,” he said. “[Brands Hatch] is my favourite track, but I’ve never done a race weekend there ever before, so I’m looking forward to it.”
