F1 Academy, Zandvoort

Jess  shows promising promise in F1 Academy as weather plays its part.

Jess  showed good speed in F1 Academy at the weekend (August 23-25), as the series held its second and final race in Europe, at Circuit Zandvoort in the Netherlands.

The Cumbrian lined up once again in her American Express car, operated by Rodin Motorsport, for two races around the 2.646-mile (4.259-km) venue, which winds its way around the sand dunes to the north of the town.

In a blustery and later wet first practice session, Jess finished ninth quickest but only 0.6s from the fastest time, while in a dry FP2 she finished fourth, just 0.3s off. Unfortunately, in a fully wet qualifying she struggled with the car a little before a red flag and afterwards was unable to find a clear gap in traffic, finishing with an unrepresentative pair of lap times.

With the weather continuing to make things challenging on the North Sea coast, the first of the weekend’s races was postponed on Saturday afternoon, moving to early the following morning for a reduced 13 laps. Starting on the damper side of the grid, she fell back at the start and thereafter couldn’t find a clear route past the cars ahead, taking the flag in 12th.

After a quick turnaround, Jess was back out for race two, aiming to give it everything she had in the 17-lap contest. Frustratingly, she stalled at the start and while doing her best to recover, she caught a huge pack of cars stretching from fifth to 16th but would have to settle for where she was, finishing 16th.

With a shorter turnaround before the next round of the F1 Academy season, Jess will be working and training hard for the hot, humid, and physical challenge of the Marina Bay Street Circuit in Singapore, over the weekend of September 20-22.

Championship: 8 (22 points)

Jess Commented: “FP1 was the closest that I’ve been all year in Free Practice so, I think it was a step in the right direction and FP2 was a lot closer to where I feel like I should be. In qualifying I should have been a bit higher, but I gave it all I had. I was struggling a little bit with the car, and then after the Red Flag I was stuck in traffic, so it wasn’t how I’d have liked it to have gone.

“With a wet grid box in race one I had a bad start and dropped back, and I struggled to come back through. It’s quite a hard track to overtake on because there are quite a lot of fast corners. Race two I felt that I had nothing to lose and to do the best I could, and then I stalled at the start. I think there’s a lot to learn from the weekend and we will keep working hard up until Singapore and try to do a better job there.”