Astuti Motorsport Media Release

While the opening day of the Fosters Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix ended with frustration for Astuti Competition’s Michael Trimble, there are plenty of positives to be taken from the day’s action.

Throughout practice, qualifying and the opening race of the Dodo Formula 3 non-championship support races, the Melbourne-based youngster was comprehensively the fastest driver in the field.

Trimble started the event by topping the sole practice session by over one-and-a-half seconds. He backed it up in qualifying, steering the King Springs Renault-Sodemo Dallara F304 to pole position with a time of 1:49.8618.

His fastest time was over one second clear of his nearest rival and a similar margin under last years pole position time.

While the opening eight-lap race didn’t quite go to plan, it was still a telling display of Trimble’s pace. He stalled on the line, and dropped to the bottom of the top ten.

Undeterred, he was back up to fifth place by the end of the opening lap. From there, Trimble closed the gap to the leaders, setting a string of fastest race laps and setting a new Albert Park F3 lap record - 1:50.4776, half a second under the old mark - along the way.

The action wasn’t quite over. While challenging Bruno Senna for the race lead at Turn 3 on the final lap, the pair clashed and spun. Contact with another competitor while rejoining the race delayed his progress further, before finishing second.

“It was pretty much a disaster,” admits Trimble of the race. “I messed up the start, then had a spin trying to get past Senna, then [Chris] Alajajian hit me and it was all just a bit messy. We were pretty fortunate to end up second after all of those things.

“We still showed some awesome pace, I think we were half a second underneath the lap record, and we were definitely the fastest car out there by a considerable margin, so that was good, but just a bit of a messy race basically.”

Despite the race not going to plan, Trimble is confident his Thursday pace will put him in a good position for the remainder of the weekend.

“The car has been so good all weekend, we’ve hardly had to change anything all weekend,” he said, “and I don’t think we will change anything between now and the next race; it’s pretty much perfect.

“We’ll keep the same setup for tomorrow and hopefully we should be able to walk away with it if everything goes to plan.”

Astuti Motorsport team owner Sam Astuti was also delighted with the pace of the car, and is looking forward to the remaining three races.

“As the sessions go, we dominated without any problems,” he said. “We were 1.6 seconds quicker than anyone else in practice, and in quali we were quick, over a second quicker than anyone else and smashed the qualifying lap record.

“Michael stalled the car on the start of the race, it happens, but he came back through the field well.

“Then the little incidents at the end, it’s just the way it worked out. We’ve got a lap record in the race, and from tenth he caught up to first basically.

“It’s all good, all very promising.”

Formula 3 action at the Grand Prix continues tomorrow, with another eight-lap race to kick off at 5:00pm local time. Race 3 will be on Saturday afternoon, and Race 4 on Sunday morning.

Astuti Motorsport thanks the support of King Springs, Adrad Radiators, PWR Performance Products, Elf, Alcon and Revolution Racewear.

-end-

Media Resources (copyright-free for media use, click for high-res) ::

Astuti Motorsport's Michael Trimble took a commanding pole position for Race 1 of the Dodo F3 support races at the Fosters Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.

Melbourne resident Trimble now holds the Formula 3 lap record at Albert Park, having lowered it by half a second in the opening race.