MOTORSPORT: JOEY FOSTER
01.12.2009 by Harry Hogge
After a break of almost three months since the 13th and 14th rounds of the Australian Formula 3 Championship back in August, Cornwall's Joey Foster made a triumphant return to racing this weekend at Melbourne’s Sandown Park Raceway.
Coming into the last two races of the season Joey trailed previous champion Tim Macrow by 4 points, and only Joey and Tim were in a position to claim the title, whatever the results.
"The job to do was to beat Tim by a minimum of 5 points over the course of the weekend, which sounds easy but is anything but", said Joey. "He's a tough racer with masses of F3 experience and has won the Championship before, so I knew it would be an uphill task".
With a bonus point for qualifying on pole up for grabs Joey made the perfect start to the weekend by claiming pole position in qualifying one for the first race, and cut Macrow's lead down to just four points. Qualifying two for the end of season super-prix was in two stages. "For the super-prix we had a grand prix style knock out qualifying, and I was on pole until the very last lap of the top six shoot out, but missed out by one tenth of a second, and I really felt I needed that point".
With Saturday qualifying out of the way the drivers and teams looked forward to the Sunday races, until, that is, they saw Sunday dawn wet, cold, and miserable. "Right up until we had to go to the grid no-one could decide if we should be on slick or rain tyres, it was such a close call. In the event we opted for slicks hoping that the track would dry, since there would be no time to pit for a change of tyres as race one was a sprint race. We went for slicks, which was the right decision. I made a perfect start into the lead and ended up winning the race reasonably comfortably".
Now two points ahead of his rival, the initiative has shifted to Joey. "Suddenly it was Tim under pressure with it all to do in the feature race, with me starting in second and him in fourth". The weather was to play a big part again though. "We decided to go out on worn wet tyres as the track was very wet but looking to dry during the long feature race, and we thought brand new wets would deteriorate too quickly once the track dried under the afternoon sun".
Joey made another good start and leapt into the lead, but numerous accidents brought safety car interventions and he was unable to pull out a commanding gap. "I was still pretty comfortable but during the last safety car period I could see the sky getting blacker and blacker and then the heavens opened as the safety car pulled in with four laps left. Now I was under pressure from the guys with brand new wet tyres, and I had to let (team mate and New Zealander) Mitch Evans through and suddenly Tim was right on my tail".
The last three laps were nail biting but Joey held on to take second place in the race and cement a Championship victory by an eventual 8 points, winning 265 to 257 after 16 races. "This is going to take some time to sink in, it's a great title to win and I get the CAMS Gold Star".