Faria: “Good to finish a harsh week on the podium”

Roberto Faria recovered from a difficult couple of rounds in the GB3 Championship with a third-place finish in Race 3 at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday.

The Checkered Flag caught up with Carlin‘s Brazilian driver after the race.

“We’ve been struggling a lot with straight-line speed the whole weekend. We don’t have the pace at all here, we’ve tried to think through the data and videos and try to improve for the next round but it’s a good way to finish the weekend on the podium.”

The reverse-grid Race 3 starting order is determined by reversing the Qualifying results, so Faria and race-winner Callum Voisin being at the sharp end will have been bittersweet for both drivers and the team.

“I expect to be fighting for podiums in the main races instead of the reverse-grid races, because three weeks ago I was one tenth from pole and now I was so far off. So yeah, a harsh week for us.

“We’ll try to check all the data, see the simulator and see what we can do for Silverstone.”

The race was truncated by a red flag for an incident involving David Morales at Blanchimont, then Mikkel Grundtvig went into the gravel at the end of Sector 2 after the restart. As a result, there were precious few racing laps but Faria was still kept busy.

“I’ve been struggling with top speed so I couldn’t really overtake, it was more [worrying] about being overtaken!

“But on the last lap I managed to get a good exit on Zak [Taylor]. I was behind him and then I just launched into the chicane.

“It was just before the safety car came out so that’s how I got the podium, in the last five metres before the race finished, so that was quite good for me!

“It’s good to finish the week like this, but we’ll try to do even better at Silverstone.”