15/8/09

It was a testing weekend for Parth at the double header weekend consisting of a round of the Central European Zone championship on Saturday followed by the Austrian championship on Sunday. The pressures of travelling and racing alone for the first time were compounded by falling ill on arrival in Vienna, and never really recovered for the rest of the meeting. He had to sit out most of Thursday practice and only did a few sessions on Friday prior to qualifying. To then qualify a strong 4th again on another new track was very satisfying. He was on pole till the last stages of Q 2 and finished the session in P3, but he was pipped to P4 by the Q1 time of another driver. The team had opted to sit out Q1. Race 1 saw him drop a few places at the start but his pace which had the 2nd fastest race lap enabled him to fight back to 5th. Race 2 was disappointing as another first corner pile up saw most of the outside row drivers shuffled way down the order. It was another climb back but this time a problem with the chain saw him way off his earlier pace and he did well to climb back to 9th. The aggregate system placed him an overall 7th, but had the starts gone well he had targeted a podium finish. Perhaps an inside row for starting would have seen totally different results !

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