Forman dogged by bad luck in the season's opening race

If there ever has been a track unlucky for our driver, you find it at Salbris, France. Jiří Forman's first unlucky encounter with this circuit occurred last year, at the ROTAX Eurochallenge series' action, when Jirka struggled to get just into the finals despite the fact that he had contested a podium placing not only at a racing event preceding that at Salbris, but also at the World Finals afterwards.

This year's Rotax Max Euro Challenge opening racing event took place from 24 to 28 March, in poor weather. The individual sessions were held in conditions ranging from a dry track to the prevailing rainy weather and even torrential rain. The adverse weather impact was evident right away in the timed practice, with Jirka only coming 27th. Having taken into account the different conditions of the individual sessions, the marshal changed the order of the drivers in a rather incomprehensible manner, putting Jirka further back, to the 7th raw of the starting grid for the four qualifying sessions, resulting in him going off the track after each start and struggling for a kind of acceptable placing. In the individual sessions, Jirka claimed the 17th, 7th, 15th and 24th places respectively. To top it all, he was given a penalty for a contact with another machine in an overtaking manoeuvre, when he was chasing the pack in session 3. In total, he took the 13th spot of the starting grid of the remedial qualifying session, his chances, in fact, dashed. The course of this session did not differ from those preceding. Right after the start, Jirka went off the track after a collision and despite his unyielding efforts and fierce, swift driving in the nine-lap session, he did not manage to reach the required 6th position.

All that Jiří Forman can do about this racing event is to forget about it and concentrate on the next action. We believe that we will see our driver on the podium again at Písek in two weeks' time.