Motor racing returnee Will Bratt delivered an impressively strong account of himself on his debut in the ultra-competitive Formula Renault 3.5 Series at Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit over the weekend, 5th/6th September, with a best finish of 12th position in the first of the event’s two contests.

Having been away from competitive race action for a couple of years, with his last single-seater outing coming as far back as mid-2011, the Banbury 27-year-old was very much thrown back in at the deep end as stand-in for Pons Racing regular Roberto Merhi – the Spaniard away at Monza on FIA Formula One World Championship duty.

Making excellent progress throughout the race meeting, significantly reducing his lap times to conclude the weekend within around 1.5 seconds of top six performance and just two seconds shy of the outright pace, Will drove immaculately on his first outing in a 500bhp-plus FR 3.5 car.

“I’m pretty happy with the weekend overall, it was a great experience racing an FR 3.5 for the first time and we made some serious progress across the three days”, commented Will, “Although race one was the best result, race two was the biggest step forward with pace – with a bit more time to think about things and acclimatise, I think we could have made some bigger improvements.

“The car is very physical to drive, really quick through the corners and faster than a GP2 Series car in qualifying. I want to thank Sito [Pons – team principal] for the great opportunity, I know we could make some even bigger strides with another go!”

With only two relatively short 50-minute practice sessions with which to get used to the Pons car and re-adjusted to single-seater competition, Will made steady gains and went on to qualify 17th fastest for race one – quicker than team-mate Philo Paz Patrick Armand.

Due to a problem for Alfonso Celis Jnr ahead of the formation lap, Will actually started Saturday’s race from 16th position and a great launch enabled him to carve his way into 13th place as the field swept through the first few turns.

Edged back to 14th before the end of lap one, the Briton then slipped behind the recovering Celis Jnr on lap three but continued to improve his pace with every lap and started to significantly reduce his times as confidence grew.  Within 0.6 seconds of team-mate Armand at the start of lap 10, Will then produced a good pass soon after to move back into 14th position.

Climbing into the top 12 by lap 21, Will was nudged back a spot on the subsequent tour by the flying Pietro Fantin – on fresher tyres – but managed to move back into 12th position before the flag when Celis Jnr was forced into retirement. With a best race lap of 1m46.462s (199.2 km/h), the debutant’s pace was within just 0.9 seconds of top eight performance at that point.

In race two on Sunday, Will finished 10 seconds clear of team-mate Armand with a strong run to 15th place and at the flag he was a whisker behind championship regular Roy Nissany. Moving up from 20th position at the start into 10th place prior to his tyre change pit-stop on lap seven, when the order settled back down he held 15th position where he remained for the duration.

During the closing stages, though, he reeled in Nissany’s Tech 1 Racing machine – closing the gap from two seconds with three laps to run to only 0.3 seconds at the finish. Notably, the Oxon racer’s best lap of 1m45.371 seconds (201.2 km/h) was only 1.5 seconds outside top six pace.