Double R’s Neil Verhagen heavily criticised Fortec Motorsport’s Johnathan Hoggard after the two came to blows on the opening lap of the final British F3 race of the weekend at Snetterton.
Hoggard was later give a 10-place grid drop for Race One at Silverstone after the clerk of the course deemed him the guilty party, and an aggrieved Verhagen did not hold back.
“I’m not sure if it was defending, or just not being very smart. I don’t know.”
“I had a better launch off the line than Hoggard and, I had a look on the inside into turn one and he made it pretty clear that was not going to happen, I was still able to have the inside line going into turn two and four or five-hundred metres before the corner he has just right hand downed, turned into me and had me in the wall before I got to turn two so before I was braking I was already in the wall and after that, I was just a passenger for the ride.
After a strong Race Two during which Verhagen made up eight places to finish third after starting eleventh in the fully reversed grid race on Sunday morning, the American was bitterly disappointed not make more of his strong pace on Sunday.
“It is just really frustrating because we had the pace as we showed in Race Two and had would have been a good start, it’s disappointing for the team because they want to see both of us up there. That’s racing, I guess it is what it is but it’s not the way we wanted end the weekend.
“It was a great race, Race Two, it was great chance and great to get most of my overtaking done early on and on older tyres. This weekend we kept our fresh tyres for the third race. It is frustrating s we’d made progress.”
Despite a sour way to end the weekend, the man from North Carolina was keen to reflect on the positives from his Snetterton weekend.
“There are positives for sure, this is only one race out of three and we have been progressing throughout the weekend, thank you to all of the hardworking guys at Double R because it is a real team effort. We’ll be back for Silverstone”