Pekka at japanese F3-tests at Fuji
Pekka Saarinen drove his first official tests with F3 car during this week at well-known Fuji F1-track. Unfortunately Pekka was forced to share ZAP Speed team's car with japanese Kurihara, who is the winner of Japan F4 serie. Pekka was the on rookie-driver among all the drivers who were testing during those two days but it surely didn't make any difference to Pekka
”There's nothing to worry about. All the drivers are rookies at some point of their career and I don't honestly think that this matter has anything to do with my performance.”
At Tuesday Pekka managed to drove only 40 laps and his fastest laptime 1.38.498 was 7th quickiest at that point. Pekka was only 1,5 seconds behind Ishiura, who was the fastest driver so far. At Wednesday morning the team engineers told that the other of these two drivers will get the whole afternoon for himself according the morning laptimes. After the morning stints Japanese Kurihara was forced to move aside due Pekka's 7th fastest time on wets. During the afternoon Pekka did do better laptimes but the rain did make the circumstances really difficult. Finally Pekka hold the 8th place in timesheets.
”In the beginning it was difficult but when I get familiar with the car and found the right rhytm, all things went much more easier and I get faster and faster laptimes. During the day we managed to found pretty good setup and at the end of the day me and team were pretty satisfied to the results.”
Pekka haven't signed any contracts yet but he thinks that there are only some minor details to take care of.
”I have been contacted from many teams and even in here I got an excellent offer from one of the top teams, Three Bond. I think I will drove some kind of tests at Motegi with them during the next week. Let's see what happens...”
18.01.2007
