The last weekend was far from easy for both Speed Factory Racing drivers at Monza, travelling to Italy as leaders in the SR3 class of the Radical European Masters. A drive through in the first race prevented them from finishing on the podium and in Sunday´s race they were forced to retire after damaging the car on lap one.

Álvaro Fontes and Toni Forné didn´t have a lucky weekend at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, where the penultimate meeting of the Radical European Masters was held and they both came as class leaders in his first season racing together. After a promising start, the outcome was complex as they weren´t able to finish on the podium, their goal to strengthen their lead in the championship.

In the first free practice session, the Iberian duo posted the fastest lap with a time of 1:57.440 and finishing 3rd in the cumulative ranking after two sessions. Saturday´s qualifying session took place at nine o´clock and it started pretty well when Fontes stormed to pole position setting a time of 1:58.349, half a second quicker than Great Britain´s Roger Bromiley. Forné also performed brilliantly as he placed third setting a lap time of 1:58.050, another promising grid position for Sunday. In the first race Fontes led the race until he was given a drive through penalty on lap seven and it dashed the hopes of winning. Finally, after overtaking several cars, Fontes and Forné finished fourth, half a second from the podium places. In Race two, a car pile-up at the start damaged the Radical SR3 lined up by Speed Factory Racing and the team was forced to retire on lap 11.

“It was a black weekend for us, because after setting pole position time everything seemed to be good. But that drive through on Saturday left us with no options and later on Sunday we were pretty unlucky as we damaged our Radical in a car pile-up on the very first lap. Unfortunately we lost the lead but everything is open for Barcelona”, Malaga-born driver explained. His Catalan teammate remarked that “it was a very demanding and extremely difficult weekend for our hopes. That penalty on Saturday prevented us from improving 4th place, and later we also faced problems on Sunday with that crash damaging the vehicle and destroying our aims here, to strengthen the lead. We lost the lead but we still have three races ahead in Barcelona. We will take it all in our stride!”.

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya hosts the season finale on 1-2 November.