Zelos picks up the pace at Knockhill

Photo credit: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Dan Zelos returned from the summer break in fighting mode for his competition at Knockhill, which saw him top the classification in the opening free practice session for the first time.

He ended the practice second overall, just 0.065s off the outright benchmark amongst the 22 competitors.

Zelos continued to shine in qualifying, but when the red flags came out midway through to retrieve a car, his strategy was quashed as there wasn’t enough opportunity to recover, landing him in fifth, 0.118s shy of pole position.

The nature of Knockhill’s challenging track layout coupled with the summer heat impacting tyres and brakes meant his victories in pace during practice couldn’t be executed in the live races. Having to settle for sixth in race one despite Zelos’ best efforts to put the pressure on Ben Mulryan, and seventh place in races two and three, it was a disappointing end to what set out to be a much more positive result.

“It was definitely a confidence boost to end up fastest for the first time in a Porsche in FP1. We knew we weren’t going to be able to replicate that form in FP2 as we needed to save tyres, but we were still the best-placed of those running on used rubber and I felt like we were in really good shape.

“In qualifying, I set a really strong time on my first set of tyres with two laps good enough for pole, but then the red flags flew. Knowing how high the degradation was, once the session resumed, we went back out on old rubber to assess the condition of the track before returning to the pits to switch over to a fresh set of boots, but I think we just mis-timed it slightly as I didn’t have long enough left to bring them up to temperature. I only got one more ‘flying’ lap in at the end and I caught traffic.

“There wasn’t much in the way of overtaking anywhere up at the sharp end. As soon as you got near to the car in front, your tyres would overheat and the brakes began to fade, which meant that barring a mistake, it was almost impossible to launch an attack – and the level is so high at the front of the field that mistakes don’t happen very often.

“If you look at my individual sector times when I wasn’t tucked up behind somebody, we genuinely had the speed to be battling for the podium in all three races.

“It was our best weekend so far in that respect – pace-wise, we were right in amongst the front-runners. It was just so frustrating not to be able to show that due to beginning too far down the grid.”

Follow Dan’s progress in the next round of the Porsche Sprint Challenge at Silverstone on 20th-21st September by checking out our social channels.