Bell’s confident air despite puncture

MATT Bell had an up-anddown weekend as his 2017 Henderson Insurance MP3 Cup Championship began last weekend.

The former Newcastle student was left feeling deflated after the first race, but made up for it in the second when he finished on the podium.

LMP3 Cup rules state that it is the amateur driver who takes the wheel for qualifying, which meant it was down to Bell’s team-mate Tony Wells to battle for position.

He manged to qualify their United Autosports Ligier JS P3 in third place on the grid ahead of the one-hour race on Saturday afternoon, and also took the wheel for the start.

“Tony had a fantastic start to race one,” explained Bell. “He went through the gap between second and first and then out-braked the pole sitter into turn one to take the lead.

“He started to build up a good buffer after that and only lost the lead when he missed a downshift and lost a bit of time in the chicane. It was a great run, though, and he was second when the Safety Car came out.

“He got his head down and built up another gap to second before pitting, and handing the car to me in second place.”

Bell joined the race in second place but felt something was amiss with the car.

“It turned out that we had a slow puncture we suspect we picked up during the Safety Car period,” he said.

“The car was getting harder and harder to handle and then on the penultimate lap, the tyre let go.

“I managed to get back to the pits and back out in time to take seventh place but we were all feeling a little deflated by the end of the race.”

In Sunday’s qualifying, Wells took another third and again got a good start, settling into second place.

Two safety car periods kept the pack relatively tight, and Bell took over and joined in second. He took the lead briefly, but didn’t have the pace to keep it, eventually settling for second.

“Second was a good result but now we need to fight for the wins,” he said.

“United Autosports has done a huge amount of testing on the Michelin tyres for the European Le Mans Series but this was the first time for me and Tony on the new Pirelli tyre so set up-wise we were on the back foot a little.

“Donington was a learning weekend for us, we now have the valuable data we need to make up the pace deficit going forward.”

The next rounds of the LMP3 Cup take place at Brands Hatch on May 20-21, but before that, Bell will be on track at Monza in Italy for the first round of the Michelin Le Mans Cup on May 13.