Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a test session with Kat Impey, as she gets to grips with her Dallara F302 for BRSCC F3 (aka ClubF3). This was her third test in the car, but the learning curve was still very steep. Arty Cameron was also there testing his rebuild Jedi Mk4 for Mono, and Amnon Needham was testing his F394 also for Monoposto.

Originally, I was attending out of interest and to provide a spare battery as they had suffered problems at the previous test with a lack of volts. However, this expanded into a semi consultancy job, as both Kat and her father Mark took the opportunity to pick my brains about Dallaras – how to set them up, how to drive them, and how to adjust the car in changing conditions. Sadly they weren’t running an onboard camera, and the download-dongle of their datalogger wasn’t working, so it was difficult to get an idea of what exactly was happening on track.

Throughout the day progress was made, with Kat learning the style required to get the best out of the Dallara, and Mark learning what was needed to get the tyres and cooling into their sweet spot. By the end of the day, on old tyres, they had together found several seconds of lap time, more confidence in the car, and a lot of data to take away on fuel consumption, tyre usage and setup options.

Will Kat be leading the grid at the start of the season? No, I don’t think anyone could expect that. But she’ll quickly become a competitive force in the series, and I’m sure everyone will look forward to her hitting the front.