Q&A: Team owner Tim Macrow
Tim Macrow is one of the most successful openwheeler racers in Australia. A three-time F3 champion, the 37-year-old is not just Ben’s team boss but has been instrumental in Ben’s step up from karting to his first openwheeler season. With the most recent round at Winton Raceway being postponed, we caught up with Tim on Ben’s impressive first round, how difficult F3 cars are and how drivers are preparing when there’s such long breaks between events due to the pandemic.
TIm, it hasn’t been much of a season but let’s talk about your thoughts from Round 1 in Sydney with Ben’s first racing an F3?
It was a pretty impressive start for Ben even though he made a couple of errors but that's just learning. It's easy to correct those but it's hard to be fast and he's got the speed and he really showed what he could do in the last race. He ironed all those minor things out by the end of the weekend pretty much so he's doing really really well for his first time in the car.
Formula 3 Cars are such powerful race cars. When you're talking about someone who’s come out of karting, what sort of a challenge was he actually facing for his first ever race meeting?
It’s a massive challenge. We really only did three test days before we got to round one and he’s dealing with aerodynamics where in karts it’s not really a thing. And we were at quite a fast track; Sydney Motorsport Park’s got a higher aerodynamic load and all that sort of stuff so for him to do what he did and jump in the car and have a crack basically, he did really well so he's impressed us.
And to start so strong with pole position as well.
By a mile too. He was really quick, 0.45 seconds faster than the rest. In the races we're still learning to get the car off the line and all that sort of stuff which is not easy, and these cars are not easy to get off the line, so there's a bit of technique to it which with more racing he'll learn. So we just need more miles and need to race a bit more which is hard at the moment.
Being able to adapt so quickly at the first round, what's Ben’s feedback like and understanding technically of these cars?
It’s massively different to anything he's ever done before so we're dealing with wings and mechanical grip as well and he's got a lot of learning to do and he's doing it really quickly. He's come up to speed really well and yeah he's learning, he's taking it all in. Because I've been there and done that, we can give him a lot of direction. The car’s in such a good place that we're focusing on what he can do right now plus making little tweaks just to make it a bit more comfortable. His feedback’s good and it will just get better.
It has been a long time between events. What have you been working on since March?
It's been difficult but he’s spent a lot of time on the simulator and just working on learning tracks. We might even do a state round soon if we can and that sort of stuff to just keep him sharp. That's what's really frustrating thing about everything that's happening right now, is that it's just really making it difficult to get laps in before the next round.
We did a test day just before the last Covid scare in Victoria and he was right back on the money really quickly, and that was a fair break in between that at the first round. So he hasn't had a big drama just jumping in the car and being close to being back on pace. So that's really impressive, to be honest. In a perfect world he’d be in the car every week but all we can do is keep his sim work going, keep on top of his fitness, and really every driver is in the same position as well. When we do get back on track he’ll be on the pace because he’s proven that before.
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