Seb Perez ready for Oulton Park
Chesterfield’s young racing driver, Seb Perez is set to travel to Oulton Park this weekend in the next round of the Simpson Race Products Ginetta Junior Championship.
The 16-year-old will be looking for a bit more luck after his last two outings at Donington Park and Thruxton have ended in a mixture of success and misfortune.
Race one at Donington saw Perez finish 11th, after changing weather conditions including a sleet storm and various position changes. He clocked up his fastest lap on the first and second sectors of the circuit, dropping to second during the third timed section of the track, only to find after the race his fastest lap had been disallowed.
Second race of the weekend saw him line up 11th on the grid, but unfortunately after a good start he retired with a damaged car after being shunted off the track.
After a battle to get the car ready for race three, his team worked wonders and saw him on the last row of the grid. Making up six places he finished in 16th position.
Despite the car sustaining 2 bent valves and brake problems at Donington, Seb’s team ensured it was running well for Thruxton.
The qualifying session saw Seb outrun every other driver on the circuit. Lap 3 was his fastest lap at 1:31.899s with a speed of 92.29mph to take his maiden pole position in the championship by one thousandth of a second.
Race one saw Perez in pole and in charge of the pack of the other 19 cars behind him. Black flagged for jumping the start and a drive through penalty saw him drop to 19th position, however he progressed through the field gaining a best race speed of up to 106.8mph and finishing 18th – still a success but a potential podium place could have been on the cards.
Race two saw Perez start from row 9 on the grid. After a good start on the first lap gaining essential places, disaster struck shortly afterwards and an incident saw Max Bird’s Ginetta retiring along with Perez.
After a month’s break with plenty of testing and some tweaks to the car he hopes that this will be a turning point in the season for him. Last season Seb finished 15th in both races at Oulton Park and hopes to improve on that this year.
He said: “I am really looking forward to Oulton Park this weekend, I enjoy racing on it and there will be a lot of local support there for me.
“The last two rounds at Donington and Thruxton hadn’t gone entirely to plan, but that’s racing for you; it’s always a learning curve and my team, JHR Developments has worked well on the car during the last 2 rounds to sort out the problems. We had a good test session at Croft just over a week ago and the car is performing great.”
Perez has still a long way to go to the end of the season at the beginning of October. Seb’s performance and all the action is broadcast live on the Sundays on ITV 4.
Editorial by Paul Horton. Landscape image: Jakob Ebrey Photography, Portrait image: Paul Horton Photography.
