A podium finish just escapes David at Donington Park during rounds 5 and 6 of the 2009 Formula Renault UK Championship.
Throughout the weekend the weather was constantly changing from a sunny and dry track to a track soaked from heavy rainfall. Testing for the weekend took place on Thursday 14th, where David was on the pace instantly and was 5th quickest in the first session until a tyre change, traffic and fuel surge prevented him from improving on his time dropping him back to 9th. Session 2 was in mixed conditions starting with a dry track followed by rain which left the track soaked. In this session David posted the 5th fastest time.
On Saturday qualifying 1 was dry and David was 5th quickest overall giving him his highest grid position so far this championship. In a wet qualifying 2 David was consistently in the top 5. In his final lap his first two sectors put him comfortably in P3 but unfortunately in the 3rd sector David hit traffic losing a second which dropped him down to 10th.
The weather forecast for Sunday's races was looking bleak and uncertain. However the rain held off for race 1 and David managed a good start to hold his position despite an attempt from Stoneman around the outside of the first corner. David was right behind 4th place Webb but lost ground to him, having to battle with a desperate Stoneman. At one point the two drivers touched wheels on the approach to Redgate. David defended well throughout the race and after a pass from Stoneman at Redgate, David made sure he had a good exit and re-took the place on the way down to Craner Curves. A few laps later Stoneman tried again only to run wide at the Old Hairpin allowing David through. After the prolonged battle with Stoneman the gap between David and Webb was too big to make up but a spin from 3rd place Calado promoted David to 4th place, which he strongly held to the finish.
Heavy rain started just before race 2 leaving the teams and drivers to make a difficult decision on tyres and strategy. At the start a stray timing beacon interfered with David's dash preventing from seeing his revs. Unfortunately in the wet conditions this contributed to David not getting a perfect start and he dropped several places. To make matters worse in the opening stages of the race David picked up damage to the front left of the car which badly affected his steering preventing him from making up ground or even maintaining track position. The damage caused the car to become very unbalanced making it difficult to get the car into the corners and David finished a disappointing 20th.
On the weekend David said; "Overall the weekend has been very good, I was on the pace in testing and in qualifying it was very close at the front, I was just a little unfortunate in the second qualifying where I had traffic on my last lap which cost me about a second which looking at the times would have put me 3rd, which would have been great. The team did a great job and when I was on track they got the strategy right under very difficult conditions. Race two was disappointing due to the timing beacon interfering with the dash at the start and the damage at the beginning of the race, but race one was a good strong performance and it shows we have the pace to be at the front. We seem to be on the pace now and it looks very positive for future races where I am confident I will be challenging for podium finishes and hopefully will get some race wins soon. I am really looking forward to Oulton Park now because we were very strong there in testing and I feel I have made huge steps forward since then, so I will definitely be aiming for the podium."
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