20th November 2006

Yorkshire teenager James Jakes drove superbly to uphold Manor Motorsport honour during the 2006 Macau Formula 3 Grand Prix yesterday, Sunday, 19th November, the BRDC Rising Star claiming a hard-fought top six finish on his debut in the 53rd staging of the annual F3 classic.

The 19-year-old joined regular Manor drivers Kohei Hirate and Kazuki Nakajima in the Dinnington-based team’s three-car assault on this year’s Grand Prix, a race regarded worldwide as the blue riband event of Formula 3 competition.

Manor, of course, won the 52nd F3 Macau Grand Prix last year with Brazilian driver Lucas Di Grassi and the team headed into this year’s event hoping for a similar level of success with Toyota Driver Development stars Hirate and Nakajima having both won races in this season’s Formula 3 Euroseries.

Jakes, meanwhile, has enjoyed a solid season in the British Formula 3 Championship and having been a finalist in the 2005 McLaren Autosport BRDC Award, after finishing third overall in the Formula Renault UK driver standings last year, he is rightly thought of as one of the country’s most promising young single-seater talents.

“I’m delighted James managed to finish in the top six during his first ever run at Macau”, said Manor boss John Booth after Sunday’s race, “To come through from 20th on the grid showed great skill and a real strength of character, he beat some very established and experienced drivers with a remarkable performance.”

At the wheel of his Mercedes-powered Dallara, Hirate led the way during the opening practice session on Thursday and after both qualifying sessions to determine the grid for Saturday’s qualification race, the Japanese star ended up second only to Kamui Kobayashi, just a 10th of a second slower than his fellow F3 Euroseries competitor.

Nakajima, meanwhile, posted the seventh fastest time overall during qualifying with a quickest lap seven 10ths of a second shy of his front-row starting Manor team-mate and Jakes’ time of 2m 16.010 seconds placed him 19th on the grid.

After 10 laps of qualification race action, Hirate crossed the line in third position – just six 10ths of a second adrift of Estonian driver Marko Asmer – with Nakajima finishing in eighth place and Jakes in 20th position.

So, with Hirate starting the 53rd instalment of the Macau F3 Grand Prix on the second row of the grid hopes were high of a potential race victory for the Manor ace but fluid on his tyres and a subsequent collision with the infamous Circuito Da Guia barriers on the penultimate lap put the F3 Euroseries race winner into a bitterly disappointing retirement.

Countryman Nakajima also came to grief in a similar way, albeit on the 11th tour of the 15-lap encounter, but it was Jakes who unexpectedly proved to be Manor’s star driver with a superb performance.

Carving his way through the order from 20th on the grid, the Yorkshireman produced a terrific drive to end the 15 laps in sixth position; the second highest finishing British competitor and one of only 12 drivers, from the 32 starters, to lap under the 2m 13.8 second barrier.

Hirate and Nakajima obviously concluded the Macau weekend on a sour note but their pace throughout was impressive and both drivers would certainly appear to have a future in Formula One ahead of them.

“We’re all very disappointed for Kohei and Kazuki, both of them stood a great chance of winning the race or finishing in the top three at least but it just wasn’t to be”, added Booth, “The Macau streets are known for their ability to bite even the very best drivers and so it proved for both of them which is a real shame.”

While Jakes’ plans for 2007 are yet to be revealed, Nakajima and Hirate both look set to compete in GP2 next year. In addition, Nakajima was announced last week as a test driver for the Toyota-powered Williams F1 Team while Hirate looks set to enjoy several tests with the full Toyota F1 team over the coming months.

“Obviously, Kazuki and Kohei have had a great year with us in the F3 Euroseries and we’ve very much enjoyed working with them”, said Booth, “We’d clearly relish the opportunity to work with James next year, he’s a proven talent as this level so we’ll have to see what happens over the winter.”