Santino Ferrucci's diary: Three races, 27 passes

After the Red Bull Ring the FIA European Formula 3 series had a summer break and I spent my three weeks at home. It was the longest stretch I have been home since March of 2014! It was great to see my four grand parents and spend time with my family. The three weeks went extremely fast as I soon found myself back on a plane to Europe with the same boring movies. My next race was in Portimao, Portugal at the Algarve International Circuit.

I arrived on Monday for a track walk and to prepare for the two-day test before the weekend. Algarve is a very difficult circuit with a lot of elevation and tricky turns. Adding to the challenge were winds of at least 20mph sustained.

My test days went rather badly as I was extremely jet-lagged. I was falling asleep doing data and even when I made a stop for a quick change in setup, I found myself dozing off for a few minutes. It also didn't help that team was struggled for a setup to get within half a second of the untouchable Prema cars. Our Mucke Motorsport team didn't test at the track this year while others had, so we were behind when we rolled out.

Before the start of the weekend we have our normal drivers briefing and its generally the same old stuff – but not this week. Portimao circuit has a lot of run-off and the stewards decided that they would not pay attention to track limits. It was a pretty big issue in testing and out of control. The stewards must have not liked what they were seeing and changed the layout halfway through testing adding a chicane at Turn 1. This changed turn one from a very fast fifth-gear corner to a second-gear entry into the chicane. I liked the change.

Testing went by fast and we didn't accomplish as much as we would have liked to. For Friday morning practice we had already made massive changes. Nothing seemed to be working. Our car was much faster on old tires than new ones and we knew this was going to be a long weekend.

Qualifying proved to be interesting as my teammates and I all qualified next to each other just outside of the top 10 for race 1. Each of us using the track to the maximum trying to find time anywhere we could. It was my best performance of the week and I was just a half second off pole in 13th in the 34-car field.

Now get this: Just before qualifying 2, the stewards decided to go back on their track limit rule but it was only the rule for 2 turns and not the rest of the circuit! OK....wait a minute, now we can abuse the limits? But not in Turn 4, only Turn 5? Seriously? Too confusing, to be honest. How many rule changes for track limits can we have in one race?

Not to mention they were going to be deleting laps in qualifying 2 if you disobeyed track limits. So the stewards made a rule for Turns 4 and 5 and not the other 12 turns on the circuit...nice, right? Finding your marks at 130mph on a track that is like a blind roller coaster and then having to change them is not fun, especially when the car is a struggle, too.

My second qualifying went pretty bad as I ended up 18th next to my teammates. All off us were still struggling and had a handful of good laps deleted off the scoreboard. There is nothing worse than losing your best times for a few centimeters. I am sure I didn't push the "free no limits" zones enough but it is what it is, so let's go racing!

Race one I was starting 13th, my best chance to score points all weekend, so I made the decision to use my best tires for this race and save the sets from qualifying 1 and 2 for races 2 and 3. Yes, a gamble that the car will be good on new tires and also thinking that I would have good tires late if I needed them. And did I mention, no wind at all for the first time all week.

I was off to a good start holding on to my 13th spot then I slowly worked my way through the field. I was quickly up to 10th, already in points. Then I was slowly picking cars off and now battling for seventh. It was a good race as I had good pace and was able to finish seventh and score a few points, set the fastest lap in the team and be the highest finishing Mucke car. One down, two races to go.

Race 2 was much more exciting because I was starting 18th and I hoped to pass a lot of cars. I had an average start and slowly began my charge through the field. I got past a few cars quickly and then got ran wide and gave a few spots back. Being very aggressive can be risky. The safety car came out for a two-car pile up in turn one. We quickly went green again and I started to resume my charge.

I was up to about 13th when I made a pass on a known to be "difficult" Brazilian driver down the straight and he decided to lunge at me into Turn 1, hitting me in the side and forcing me off the track. I still was able to pass him for 12th and that put me right behind my teammate, Gunther. This American had been given team orders before the race started to leave him plenty of room if I passed him and not to fight with him. Yeah, right. Just as a note: I have raced my other teammate Jensen so hard this year without issue, so I know the problem isn't me. I quickly passed him for 11th but not before he tried to run me off-track twice. Typical...

Then my engineer Ralf came on the radio and told me I had to let past the car that hit me off the track. I wasn't very happy that I needed to let both my teammates by because the guy was now three cars behind me. I had to give up three hard-earned places from 11th now back to 14th.

Lucky for me, just after I gave the spots back, a safety car came out to bunch up the field. I had a perfect restart and passed back the car I had to let by and also passed Gunther for the second time this race! Now I was into 12th with only three laps left.

I quickly closed the gap on the two cars in front of me and I got a very good run on them down the main straight and made it a three-wide pass into Turn 1. It was exciting to pull that off and now I was now into 10th. I was very happy to finish there passing a total of 12 cars and passing a few cars twice. Not to mention I set the fifth-fastest race lap and again the fastest Mucke car.

Race 3 was just as eventful as I was starting all the way back in 22nd, which is not very much fun because it can get crazy back there really quickly. Fortunately I had the perfect start, passing five cars off the line and already moving into 16th before the second turn. A lap one caution came out when Gunther had run over another car that lost fuel pressure. So I was 13th by the end of lap one and for sure the best opening lap I have ever had!

I was on a mission for more points, and with another great safety car restart I was up to 11th with 10th place in my sights. It took some work as he had new tires and good pace so I would have to pressure him to use up some tire.

With five laps to go I made a great move late on the brakes into the Turn 1 chicane and made my way to 10th! It was an awesome drive and my third race in the points from nowhere on the grid. But I had a little misfortune. I had nobody near me, clean air and points in my pocket with three laps to go...what can possibly go wrong on cruise control? My engine. It started to misfire as I lost at least one cylinder and had to retire the car. I had this issue early in testing but to be fair I have not had any mechanical issues all year and that's a tribute to my Mercedes powerplant.

It was disappointing for that to happen and all that work to go to waste, but failures are a part of racing. I will say that I have made a lot of mistakes this year and to have three perfect drives confirms that I am learning how to manage my tires and the race craft I will need in the future. I passed a total of 27 cars in the three races – with only a few scratches.

A big thanks to my sponsors Eastern Account System, Cly-Del Manufacturing, Alpinestars, Arai Helmets and Brett King Design. Special thanks to my engineer Ralf Druckenmuller for finding the changes we needed in the race and to all of Mucke Motorsport, Jo Zeller Racing and the guys at HWA Mercedes.