In his fifth round of the Formula Renault EuroCup championship at Belgium’s historic Spa Francorchamps circuit last weekend, 21-year-old Thomas Randle scored another handful of points and a top five finish to again end the weekend as the highest placed Australian in the massive 34-car field.
After a wet test day the week prior, and with the weekend showing blue skies across the three days, one practice session was all that Randle was offered to try and find the optimum setup in the car before the two qualifying sessions.
In the practice session, the cars floor was bottoming out on the track, causing the car to handle in an odd way, thus leaving Thomas down in fifteenth place.
The team managed to get the car sorted and the Aussie qualified tenth for race one and seventh for race two. Qualifying two was a lot trickier with the car handling a bit strange and Thomas could only salvage fifteenth place.
Race one was held on early Saturday morning, which ultimately became a problem due to the heavy fog covering the circuit. The race was called after 14 minutes behind the safety car and thus Thomas finished where he started, and once again finishing in the points.
Race two was much more of a race, and Thomas worked his way up from seventh on the grid to finish fifth.
In the final encounter, Randle had another great race and moved forward from 15th to finish 11th, just missing out on the points.
"It is a bit of mixed emotions this weekend," said Randle.
"It was a shame that we didn’t get to have an actual race in race one. I thought the fog wasn’t too bad and we were starting in a really great position, however they had to make the safest decision. Race two was really good, and I did an excellent move coming out of the chicane after a great slipstream battle down the Kemmel straight.
Race three was a bit tricky as we struggled for pace. I felt like we had a tyre issue, and they were the same set of tyres we used in qualifying two. However I was able to move up four positions, just missing out on the points.
The team did a fantastic job all weekend as always and I am looking forward to ending the season on a high in Barcelona at the end of October.” Randle will be back in the Formula Renault on the 27th of October at the final round of the championship at Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona.