Hugh Barter is delighted with his French F4 victory and double second place at Lédenon to extend his championship lead over Alessandro Giusti.
The championship leader now leads the standings by 28 points with two rounds to go at Valencia at Paul Ricard.
Barter won’t be able to score points next timeout at Valencia as he has already races at the Spanish circuit this season in Spanish F4.
The Australian said after Ledenon that Race 3 was slightly underwhelming but Barter was pleased with his efforts over the weekend: “It was quite a consistent weekend with one win and two seconds.
“I would say that the weekend overall was a good weekend, I think I was more disappointed in the third race not to win because we definitely needed that win because we don’t score points at Valencia.
“But in the end it is what it is and we still got six points on (Alessandro) Giusti this weekend so we still gained some points but not as much as what we hoped for but anyhow it was a good weekend.”
Prior to the weekend, Barter was wary of tyre degradation becoming an issue but tyre wear was less of a factor than the Australian initially thought.
He said: “Tyre deg was a pretty crucial one, honestly it was better than what we thought it was going to be.
“In the last race it was pretty hard to follow, at some point the tyre just gives up when you follow for too long and that just seemed the case and towards the end I just couldn’t say as close as I would like to him (Giusti) so I didn’t really get the opportunity to pass.
In the closing stages of Race 2, Barter produced a superb Safety Car restart to overtake Red Bull Junior Souta Arao on his way to a second place finish.
The Australian applied relentless pressure and forced his rival into a series of driving mistakes to get past. Barter explained the intricacies of perfecting a restart: “In Race 2 the Safety Car restart was quite solid I put a lot of pressure on him (Souta Arao) and it seems to force him into a couple of errors where I eventually passed him into Turn 11.
“The Safety Car restart is pretty simple, I guess it depends also where you start like if you already upfront it’s not so much of an issue because it seems to be like a lot of people are going just coming out of the last corner.
“So if you time it right you can kind of take a rough guess at when they’re gonna restart but it’s just more about knowing the track well and taking a rough guesstimate.”
Barter will continue his assault on the French F4 championship at Valencia on the 16-18th of September, ending a triple header of events for the 16-year-old.
