Edward adds to podium tally at Spa

Edward Pearson battled hard to secure a third podium finish of the Euroformula Open season despite a tricky weekend at Spa as the series headed for Belgium for the second meeting of the campaign.

The young Briton headed into the weekend on the back of an impressive season opener with his new Nielsen Racing team in Portugal, where he grabbed the first win of a new era for the series following the introduction of the Dallara 324 car, and then backed it up with a third place finish in race two.

It was clear from practice however that the Spa meeting would be more of a challenge for Edward and the team as he ended both free practice sessions in the lower reaches of the top ten.

It would be a similar story in qualifying as Edward had to settle for the tenth best time, with all three of the Nielsen Racing cars struggling to match the pace of the front-runners.

Lining up on the fifth row of the grid for race one, Edward slipped a place at the start behind team-mate Finn Green but was soon making up ground to end the opening lap having climbed up into eighth spot.

Continuing to charge his way forwards through the field, Edward made up another spot on lap two and then took sixth a lap later when Fernando Barrichello ran off track to bring out the safety car.

Edward retained position on the restart and had climbed up into fifth when the safety car was called out for a second time, with the action getting back underway with three laps remaining. Although he briefly dropped to sixth, Edward overhauled both Michael Shin and Everett Stack over the final two laps to take the flag in fourth spot.

Starting race two from third on the grid, Edward lost a spot at the start to Yeven David before reclaiming the position on lap two, and would then battle hard on track with Tymeck Kucharczyk and Stack before the American went off track to bring out the safety car.

That closed things up at the front with Edward sitting fourth on the restart, which immediately became second when two of the cars ahead clashed at turn one.

Now sitting in second spot, Edward briefly managed to get ahead of Kucharczyk into the lead of the race but the Pole managed to reclaim top spot and secure the win as Edward took the flag in second for a third podium in five starts.

Lining up tenth again for the final race of the weekend, Edward showed strong race pace but would ultimately finish where he started to end the meeting fourth in the championship standings ahead of round three at the Hockenheim circuit in Germany.

“Overall it’s been a weekend which was a case of damage limitation to an extent when you compare it to the season opener,” he said. “Qualifying was difficult and not where we should have been, and that ultimately had an impact on our weekend from that point forwards.

“Even then, we were able to race forwards in the opening race and the obvious highlight was scoring the podium finish in race two which meant good points in the championship.

“We need to now just look forwards to Hockenheim and look to come out fighting in round three to try and get back onto the top step.”