Dino Zamparelli's GP3 - Italy

Monza! I had some unfinished business with Monza having crashed out at the start of the first race there in 2013. There were reasons behind that crash, of which I won’t go into. But needless to say, I was very determined to bounce back a year later with some success.

Monza is a pretty special place to race. Lots of history, amazingly fast race circuit and of course the F1 fans are so immensely passionate about racing. It always feels special to race in front of so many people, but Monza has something extra that certainly made me want to do really well this weekend.

It all started out well, with my EasyJet flight having no screaming babies. That’s always a good sign of a good weekend for me! Simulator, briefings, preparation and meetings took up all the time from Tuesday until Friday. 

Italian food is always good in Italy. Myself and my two team mates enjoyed a really delicious Italian meal on Thursday evening. I think the reason the food is so good, is because there are no chain restaurants there. All of the restaurants (most of them) are owned and run by a single family. The husband and wife cook and clean, and the children and other family help out with the cooking and the serving. That’s just the way of life out there; the family recipes get handed down and the food stays as delicious as it always was! Needless to say, it’s quite easy to over eat in Italy. Luckily my training and diet leading up to the race was really strong, so when I hopped on the scales to get weighed before the weekend, my engineer did not have a heart attack!

Friday Free Practice went quite well. Most of the people put two sets of new tyres on, as oppose to our one set. So despite being placed 14th after FP, I reckoned we were inside the top five quite comfortably. Driving round Monza is intense, but not really. I know that is such a contradiction, but it’s quite difficult to explain the feeling of going round Monza. You effectively have six corners, and four long straights. And although the long straights do give us a small amount time to think and ready for the next corner, it all comes up really fast and you have to carry really good speed round most of the corners. 

Turn One is a really late and heavy braking zone – we are carrying around 270km/h going into it and braking around 100 metres before the corner. The whole body jolts down into the seat as we try and hit the brakes as hard as possible. We go from sixth down to first gear, which is more gear changes than any other circuit on the calendar. Then we have to make sure the exit is clean; it’s all too easy to go one or two metres too late on the brakes and miss both the apexes and lose a sack of time in Turn One. 

For Turn Two, it’s a tight little left/right, and we are carrying some good speed into it. Once again it’s important to brake really late here, but also get the car stopped like Turn One, and get a nice clean exit.

The next two corners, turns three and four are called Lesmo One and Lesmo Two. They look pretty similar as corners, and the whole idea is to carry a lot of speed around Lesmo Two, and then to get a mighty exit out of Lesmo Two. Lesmo Two leads onto a pretty long back straight before Ascari, so a good exit is crucial.

Then we come up to the last two corners, my favourite corners on the circuit. First up is Ascari, where we are carrying around 250 or so km/h going in. It’s important to keep the momentum up in the corner, as this too leads onto another really long straight before the final turn. However, it’s also important to be quite brave around Ascari and brake late into it, and get back onto the power early. It’s quite easy to lose the car here as the car is constantly snaking around at the rear.

The final corner is so much fun; the famous Parabolica which unfortunately had been modified for this year’s grand prix. In previous years, it had gravel everywhere except on the track, and the trick to the corner is to hug the white line all the way from the exit until the straight. It used to be a wall of death – a ‘who can carry more speed around and get closer to this white line’. You knew that one small mistake and the gravel trap was going to suck you in where you would more than likely end up in the wall. You also knew that if you were not quite quick enough on the power, or not quite running enough speed, you would be slow. 

However, they did away with all of the gravel for this year, so anyone who got it wrong would just simply run wide. That element of danger and excitement was taken away; and with it, all that history was taken too.

Nonetheless, the corner still remains exciting, and it’s important to brake super late and carry good speed in whilst still getting a really good exit down onto the front straight, for a quick lap of Monza!

For Qualifying, I managed to put it all this together and qualify on the front row in second place! It was my first front row start of the year, and by far my best lap of the year. I didn’t feel like I could eek anymore time out of it however, and the chap on pole had it by a few tenths. So I think although I felt like I extracted the maximum during the session, the pole man just had a little margin on me.

And so that remained, or at least it did for the race. I got a decent start but again not quite as good as the pole sitter. I pulled in behind him and quite literally followed him all the way to the flag. I did however think I should have won the race. I had so much more pace from three quarters of the way in until the end. I even got fastest lap near the end to further prove how fast we actually were. 

I came across the line in second place however, and recorded my fourth second place in a row!! So many second places – which isn’t too bad of course! It’s great to have such consistency and keep scoring the podium places, but I have come so desperately close to winning all of those races, and frankly had the pace and speed to win all the those races. However, I can’t complain too much and was pretty happy for my team ART Grand Prix and Bristol Sport, to be standing on the GP3 podium again. 

After the race, I went and had a huge local pizza with Bristol Sport to celebrate the podium. It was so good but oh so filling! My engineer would have complained in the morning, but with the podium from the day before, I felt like he couldn’t really say anything!

On the Sunday morning we had the second race of the weekend, which unfortunately did not fare well for me. I got a decent start, but at the first corner, someone made contact and hit me quite hard on my left rear wheel. This in turn unbalanced my car, and caused me some problems when I tried to hit the brakes. As I explained earlier, the brakes are hugely important round here, so I was not able to unlock the same pace as I had in the Saturday’s race. I finished a lowly ninth place having struggled the whole race, and it was the first time out of the points for me since Round Two in Austria! In fact, it was only the second race all year that I was out of the points. Gutted!

However as a whole, the weekend was good, and I was able to score more big points for the championship and keep myself right in the hunt to be in second place overall. From second place overall to eighth place, it’s all incredibly tight – one bad weekend from anyone in that area, and you could fall from second right down to eighth! 

I am currently seventh in the title race – I’m lying low as they say, and with only two rounds left of the championship, I am in a good place to step out of the shadows and sneak up on everyone and overtake them! I want that first win and the next race is in Russia. 

Russia is a new track for quite literally every driver racing that weekend. It’s a brand new circuit in Sochi. It looks good and Russia is a pretty cool place to go and visit. So, I cannot wait. We have a long break now, around five weeks, so there will be enough time to chill out and have some fun before the year ends! 

Watch this space; I’ll be pushing right through to the end. I want more podiums and I want that first win, enough with second places... As they say, ‘If you keep knocking on the door; eventually it will come down!’

DZ

Follow Dino on Twitter: @DinoZamparelli