Asian Motor Sports

Another weather lottery saw New Zealand driver Jonny Reid achieve fifth and seventh place finishes at the seventh round of the 2006 All-Japan Formula 3 Championships at the Fuji circuit (in the shadow of Japan’s Mt Fuji) over the weekend.

Reid again struggled with set-up issues in qualifying - setting the ninth fastest time for the first race and eight for the second - but he fought his way up the field to finish an impressive fifth in the (dry) first race and seventh in the (wet) second one.

Japanese driver Kazuya Oshimam, who qualified on P2 for the first race and pole for the second, won the first race from Finn Marko Asmer, Brazilians Fabio Carbone and Roberto Streit, and Streit’s INGING teammate Reid, but championship points leader Adrian Sutil was too good in the damp and very slippery track conditions that greeted drivers in the second, leading home Oshima, Streit, Takuya Izawa and Asmer.

Carbone was sixth, Reid seventh.

Reid now boards an aeroplane later today to fly to London from where he will head to the English Midlands for a seat-fitting then two-day test with New Zealand’s A1GP team at Silverstone.

Reid and fellow Aucklander Matt Halliday are New Zealand’s two A1GP drivers and the pair will spend Wednesday and Thursday testing under the auspices of the new operation running the team, SuperNova.

Reid says he thoroughly enjoyed his races in ‘Black Beauty’ last year and he is already looking forward to slipping back behind the wheel of the car next week.

“A Formula 3 car is good, he says,“but the A1 car has more power and more aero and when you are a racing driver you’re always looking for more of both!”

After the test Reid will return to Japan to prepare for the eighth round of the 2006 All-Japan Formula 3 Championship at Fuji over the September 16/17 weekend.

Last year he was forced to cut short his All-Japan Formula 3 Series campaign with the INGING team because of date clashes with A1GP rounds. However this year he is able to attend both series, with the first and second rounds of the A1GP series (in The Netherlands and Czech Republic respectively) sandwiched between the penultimate and final rounds of the All-Japan championship. (SOURCE: xtraMSN)