Hugh Barter says “there’s a lot of confidence after the weekend” despite leaving Bahrain with zero points in FIA F3.
The Australian driver qualified fifth for the Feature Race on his debut weekend, the highest of the three Campos drivers.
Barter said: “There’s a lot of confidence after the weekend, the pace was good in both races and in qualifying.
“Just too many mistakes in Race 1 and then Race 2, I had a bad start, I got shuffled back and then I knew Pepe (Marti) was coming.
“I was just taking care of the tyres and I was a bit too conservative and I had a puncture and it was a bit unlucky. There’s still a lot to learn.”
The 17-year-old explained that tyre management was a real challenge in the heat of Bahrain and the lap times dropped off a lot during the races.
“Managing the tyres is probably the worst on the calendar they just overheat so fast.
“Our lap times between the first three laps and the last three laps was almost a two second difference for some of us.
“It’s something you really have to manage, take care of and even though you feel like you’re really slow, sometimes you might actually be fast.
“In Race 2 I felt really slow when I came out of the box after having a puncture and my engineer came onto the radio and said ‘your pace is good keep this up’ and I was shocked.
FIA F3 saw plenty of on-track battles in Bahrain, Barter revealed he made minor contact in the thick of the highly competitive 30-car field.
“The wheel-to-wheel racing will get better across the year.
“There’s a lot of rookies and we’re still finding the width of the car and making sure we’re placing the car correctly because the amount of times I made contact with someone, not big contact just slight contact you wouldn’t believe it.”
Barter explained he learned a lot over the weekend ahead of round two of the season in Australia and race strategy is a key point to getting good results.
“It’s mainly racecraft and strategy in the races and how important it is to not make mistakes even if your under-pushing a little bit.
“I think it’s more benefit than over-stressing the tyres but thee’s lots learnt here that I can carry over to the next round and as a driver it’s my job to put those to use.”
Image: Formula Motorsport Ltd
