De Palo happy to finally realise potential after solid P4 at Silverstone Sprint

Matteo De Palo scored his first points in Formula 3 by finishing fourth in the Silverstone Sprint Race – although he was frustrated to have been pipped to a podium on the last lap.

The TRIDENT rookie is enjoying his best weekend of the season, qualifying fifth on Friday, and today he was one corner away from a first podium.

But despite that, the Italian is delighted to finally be fighting at the front, as he can show the potential that he and the team have had all season.

“We knew that this was our potential,” he said. “We've been really lacking in the previous races, but we managed to put it all together this week.

“We were starting pretty far from the podium in P8 for the first bit, so also seeing that we were fighting for P2 even at the end of the last lap, makes me confident for tomorrow because the pace looks really, really unbelievable.”

While happy with this pace, De Palo was slightly annoyed to have lost out to Théophile Nael on the last lap.

The Campos Racing driver pipped him to the final spot on the podium, but tomorrow he is hoping that he can have a better ending on Sunday.

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“It was really a fun race until the end,” he joked. “I lost the position to Théophile for the podium at the last corner, so it was funny until there.

“It wasn't really fun for me then, maybe for Théophile because he got the podium. But overall the race was really good, fighting through the fast corners, on the outside, inside, it's been a really, really nice race.

“I’m looking forward to tomorrow to have the same one. Hopefully with a better ending.”

De Palo feels he is enjoying his “cleanest” weekend of the season so far having had a few issues this year that have left starting at the back of the field.

The 18-year-old hopes to convert this strong performance into a positive result on Sunday.

“Tomorrow, we start more at the front,” said De Palo. “There are more opportunities to get, everything is there to take.

“We will look forward already trying to make up positions from the first lap. But I think we didn't maximise completely our results in quali yesterday, losing the P2 by just half a tenth, so I think we can get there and hopefully fight with Freddie for the lead in the race.”