Jaafar, racing with Carlin for a second season, ran comfortably in the top ten throughout the official test and completed his preparations for the first round of the championship at Monza next week. The two-day test saw the 20-strong field of British F3 cars take to the new track layout at the Snetterton circuit. The all-new Snetterton 300 track has been heavily revised and presented a new challenge for Jaafar and his rivals, with Jaafar commenting after the two days of testing, “It’s a very different layout from the previous one and a good combination of high and low speed corners, which require a very precise set up. Much of the work we did here will be used when we visit the track in May, as it is the third round of the British F3 championship.” Jaafar began the two-day test with his strongest session, posting fourth quickest lap in the morning of the first day, and running on old tyres throughout the day he finished 13th in the afternoon. Jaafar reflects, “I was pleased to be up at the front straight away, and in the afternoon I wasn’t surprised to be further down the order as we were running on old tyres while some of the field put on new ones.” On the second day of running Jaafar was seventh quickest in both sessions. In the afternoon he had new tyres, but wasn’t able to get the best of them after encountering traffic on his optimum ‘hot lap’. The 18-year-old driver summed up the test saying, “I’m comfortable with my performance this week and feel quite confident for the season ahead. The Snetterton test was mainly focused on preparing for the race weekend there in May as it is a new track layout, so I needed to learn this and work with my engineer to develop the car set up for it. Now it’s time to focus on the racing ahead.” The young Malaysian will have little time to relax before the first round at Monza. He flew straight off to Malaysia after the test, attending the 2011 Formula 1 PETRONAS Malaysian Grand Prix as a guest of PETRONAS and Mercedes GP PETRONAS F1 Team. He will then fly on to Italy for the first round of the British F3 Series.