Novalak: “We’ll have to Find a Good Compromise for Tomorrow”

At the end of a boisterous day for Clement Novalak, in which he recorded his second win of the season, Motorsport Radio caught up for a chat about his Saturday at Silverstone.

A drenched circuit greeted the drivers in the morning, with the threat of cancelling qualifying and running race one in points order initially on the board. Fortunately, this was soon scraped, as series leader Novalak claimed his second pole of the year.

He would have been desperate not to have repeated Snetterton’s mistake, where he lost out to points rival Johnathan Hoggard despite his hard work in qualifying.

Fortunately for him, Hoggard would not be a factor. A ten place grid penalty for the British F4 graduate saw him start on the back row, giving Novalak a cleaner run to flag, just needing to hold off Ayrton Simmons and Neil Verhagen on the opening lap of a slightly drier race.

“It’s still early on, but the penalty Johnathan had really helped. I don’t really know where our pace was compared to the rest of the pack, I could only really compare myself to Ayrton and Neil,” started Novalak.

The Carlin driver broke away in the early stages, building a four second gap in as many laps. The opening British F3 race of the weekend was instead characterised by the fight for second behind, though despite this free air and drying surface, Novalak failed to record the fastest lap.

“I think it was a good race, we definitely struggled a bit more than they did towards the end, though our pace in the first few laps was really quick. So we’ll have to find a good compromise for tomorrow in race three and hopefully make some ground up in race two.”

“Tomorrow in race two, is all about seeing what happens in front of you for the first lap, and then trying to pick off your opponents. Obviously I think there are some guys that are significantly slower, but there will be guys who are relatively the same pace as us such as Ayrton, who’s starting in front, etcetera. It will definitely be an interesting race and it’ll be good to watch from the outside.”

Suggesting the start would be crucial, Novalak knows that Silverstone could turn into a low pressure weekend, knowing that keeping it on track will be his most crucial target.

“The pressure remains the same when you’re on the grid and you’re about to start. That doesn’t really change,” he said, thinking back to how his fortunes had progressed since last year. “In terms of the championship, it’s always good to be pulling away, but it’s still really early days, so that doesn’t really change my mind set. I just want to take it race by race, do the best I can and hopefully we’ll get a good result at the end of the season.”

He now sits 57 points ahead of Hoggard with race two at 11:10 Sunday.