Ayrton Simmons believes that he and his Chris Dittman Racing Team can challenge for top honours at the 2019 British F3 Championship this season.
Simmons took two podiums and a top in Race Two away from a strong weekend at Oulton Park, and was aiming higher for the rest of the season.
“We should be challenging for the top step, we had the speed in pre-season testing so I don’t see why we shouldn’t be pushing for that podium for the rest of the year and challenging for the title.
“The races last season helped me, we didn’t much testing last year,just the races but it does help to have a little bit of experience from last year to help us prepare as much as we can for this year.”
An incident midway through Race Three saw Simmons drop from the lead down to second, with the stewards demoting him to third after it was ruled that he unfairly, if unintentionally, blocked Clement Novolak after locking his brakes at Hislop’s.
Simmons held his hands up after the race and admitted an error on his part.
“I was trying to push too hard as I could tell the guys were closing in little by little each lap and I just made a small error at that first chicane. I was side by side with Novolak, we were both trying to push for the lead, we ended up going off and that’s how Hoggard passed us both.
“On the same lap I had another go around the outside at the last corner but after that it’s really hard to follow here so I didn’t have another chance.”