Paul O'Neill - VX Racing

A mixed weekend for Paul in Mondello saw a pitlane collision with Proton's Phil Bennett in race one, but he recovered to finish an encouraging 4th in the second race. When we caught up with him at Thruxton he was his usual cheery self, and swore his way though another interview for us!


So talk us through Mondello - a stressful weekend?

F***in' hell, I can't remember all of it - it was sh*t! [See, he's sworn twice already in the first sentence!] Practice was good, I got a bit of time in. Qualifying was good but the quickest laps I did I made mistakes on because I had Yvan behind me with his headlights on and that's a bit perturbing, so I was a bit gutted about that, qualifying where I did,

First race? F***in' hell. Got a bit of a tap at the start and almost spun but kept my position and got it going. I had a bit of a battle with Warren Hughes in the wet on dry tyres, I tried to get past him but couldn't. I had that incident when I pitted and sustained quite a lot of damage, and then when I had my drive-through that was my race done really.

Second race I just wanted to get some points, put some scores on the door, but then it pissed it down - but it was alright.

Watching it on TV that incident in the pits looked absolutely terrifying, but presumably you couldn't see a thing.

It was a bit of a communication mixup with the engineers. I was supposed to come in first but Jimmy came in because his engineer couldn't hear my engineer. So everyone was like headless chickens: we've got two pit crews and two pit boxes, I just parked up behind Jimmy like I was told but then they decided to change my tyres anyway. So then I had no space to move out, and when I was told to go I hesitated to avoid the air bottles. But then it was too late and I hit Bennett and spun him round. I just saw a load of people there and a truck.

I was on the pit lane limiter round the first two corners because I was just in shock! I got on the radio to see if anyone had been injured but the team said no, so that was that. Bennett was okay about it but it was a really horrible accident.

Do you think it was unfair that you got a drive through penalty for something that wasn't your fault?

Rules are rules, I'm part of the team so I'll take a hit for the boys.

What have you managed to get out of today's testing?

F*** all! It's just good to get in the car really, I'm not very good in the wet so I'm trying to tidy up my wet weather driving. We tried something really strange on the car and went a tenth quicker than Yvan and James so that was quite interesting.

Looking forward to Brands Hatch?

Yeah! I've got a lot of friends and family coming down. I've got a bit of ballast, not a lot, so I'm looking to out-qualify my two team mates. That'll do me! I'm just looking forward to the CART race, me. That's going to be f***in' horrendous - their arms are going to be killing them coming out of Paddock Hill bend!

Would you like to have a go in one?

Oh I'd love to, but the only thing I'm likely to do is beat Paul Tracy to the bar!




[Cheers fella - you kept us in stitches typing this up and editing out the swearing!]

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