Maranello, 24 January - Raffaele Marciello is continuing to gain experience in New Zealand’s Toyota Racing Series, racing last weekend in the second of five races, this time at the Timaru circuit. In terms of results, the weekend did not live up to expectations for Raffaele, but the experience gained on track will come in useful in the remaining races. “We didn’t come away from Timaru with much,” admitted the 17 year old from the Ferrari Driver Academy. “But in terms of the work we did, the weekend was gratifying. We had a lot of set-up problems at first and in qualifying I could do no better than ninth.”

Set-up problems continued to affect the first of three races over the weekend, with Raffaele finishing where he started in ninth. “It was a boring race,” he said. “Only 10 laps and on a track where my set-up problems meant overtaking was impossible. The engineers then decided to make a drastic change to the settings and in the opening laps of Race 2, it was immediately clear it was the right choice. Unfortunately I was hit by another driver (later penalized) and spun which dropped me down to 20th. I managed to get going again and got as high as tenth. But my race pace was good, so I felt optimistic again.”

Progress continued in the third and final race held on a dry track, after morning rain. “I started from ninth and managed to keep a good pace and finished fifth, also setting the race fastest lap. It was a good achievement which I hope is a good sign for next weekend starting with the first race. So far we have always started by having to catch up with the others and I hope that at Taupo I can immediately be a front runner.”

Round 3 of the Toyota Racing Series is next weekend at Taupo, which at 3.3km is the longest of the series: as usual, the event starts with free practice is on Thursday and goes through to the second and third races on Sunday.