Queens’ Design made their way once more to Monza for the second round of the HM Engineering GT3 Series. With the last round being a rather messy affair, Mia Rose was determined to turn her luck around and make the points situation more in her favour, attempting to stay out of trouble and turn up the pace even further.
Mia managed to place herself seventh on the grid for the start of her race, once again unlucky not to find her true pace throughout the session. This would be remedied immediately however with a fantastic jump off the line, picking up a spot and settling into sixth coming out of Variante del Rettifilo, filing right behind fifth place competitor Vlad Tokarev. Throughout the initial phases of the race she settled in behind Vlad and Jaka Siswoyo to conserve fuel. Vlad would make a mistake at Ascari though, giving the position towards Mia.
This would open an opportunity to work on Jaka for the fourth position, waiting until the right moment to make her move. Mia would finally get the chance at Rettifilo once more, going around the outside of Jaka to masterfully pull off an overtake for the fourth position. Promptly she’d pull away, already setting her sights on a podium and looking to make up for the last round’s misfortune and carnage.
Opting to use the overcut for her pit strategy, Mia went further than her competitors and managed to overtake Daffa Nabiel through the cycles, comfortably finding herself in third and potentially on the podium. Throughout the cycle former race leader Liam Rance was penalized with a drivethrough for a track limits violation, dropping quite a ways back into the field and further advancing Mia’s position, leaving her to defend the second step on the podium from Daffa. Although Daffa tried his best to find a way past Mia, she managed to receive the checkered flag in second! Throughout the last 25 minutes of the race, she was on the qualifying mix which had only left her with a single litre of fuel coming to the finish!
With Mia successfully finding redemption from Imola, she now looks towards repeating her successes at the Nurburgring. With a confidence boost Mia will be able to perform at her best without question. We wish to see all our supporters there in time for the race, and as always, we thank them all for following us through thick and thin.
(text by Ruby Acosta, pictures by Mia Rose)