South Africa’s Eugene Denyssen ended his rookie British Formula 3 season on a high at the Donington season finale in a weekend that saw the Somerset West youngster score his first pole position and stand on the podium for the first time after he finished second in the second race.
“I am absolutely delighted to finish the season with my best weekend and best results of the year,” a delighted Denyssen explained. The second race was without doubt the highlight of my season – it was such a great feeling to put it on pole and lead most of the race off pole position.
“I made a good start and managed to break away a bit, but Toby Sowery managed to get a bit of a run on me on about lap seven after the safety car had gone back in.” Eugene explained. “Once in second I managed to stay there for the rest of the race even though I overheated my rear tyres a little when Toby passed me, but we managed to keep everyone else behind and we did a good job.”
The race result paled Eugene’s difficulties through the weekend into insignificance – he had started race 1 at the back after spinning in qualifying, but recovered well first race to climb from 20th to 8th despite the race being shortened by a late incident to put his SWR machine onto pole position for the second race. The third race was however one to forget as Eugene trailed home a lap down after earlier issues.
“Donington was a bit of a bittersweet weekend overall, but we will gladly take the positives out of this one,” Eugene concluded. “In the end it was great to end our season on a high like this – it definitely beckons well for the future”.