More than two months after arriving home in Melbourne on a quick one-week visit for the Australian Grand Prix in early March, I am now finally back in England!

Having been called back to the UK by Renault Sport Academy and Prema Racing to prepare for the next month’s likely kick-off for the 2020 FIA Formula 3 Championship in Austria, I jumped onto one of the flying kangaroo’s Dreamliners last week to make the 17,500km journey via Perth to London.

While restrictions at home are easing somewhat, understandably international travel is not so straight-forward, and I needed to apply to the Department of Home Affairs for an exemption to leave the country.

Having been a resident of the UK the past five years, it was an easy process for me with the approval coming through within just a couple of days.

I was happy to get the green light to head back to Europe, but it was difficult saying “goodbye” to my family. The 10 weeks with my parents and sisters was the longest we’d spent together in five years, and I enjoyed it, and we all made the most of the opportunity.

It didn’t take much to settle back in, enjoy the comforts, and get used to being at home again, but now it’s time to get back to racing.

I’ve made plenty of flights between the UK and Australia over the past five-six years. Still, this one was a little strange, from Melbourne’s almost-deserted airport to a near-empty plane, having to wear a face mask, being given a biohazard waste bag, and no inflight entertainment for the 21-hour trip.

A lot worse things are going on in the world at the moment than a lack of movies on a plane, so it wasn’t anything to sook about, and the trip went by pretty quickly.

A side-benefit of the current situation was my A-Level exams having to be cancelled, so I’ve now officially finished school.

As a result, the first task I had when I landed was to pack my things up from Haileybury, the school at which I’ve been boarding for the past five years and move into a new flat.

I’m sharing the unit with Caio Collet from Brazil, who was my team-mate at R-ace GP in last year’s Formula Renault Eurocup Series and is also a member of the Renault Sport Academy.

We’re halfway between Oxford and Enstone, where the Renault DP World F1 Team is located, and not too far from Silverstone, so for us, it’s all about location, location, location!

Renault installed a new simulator last week, and I’ve already been practising on the Baku circuit as it looks like I’ll be contesting the F1 Virtual Grand Prix on June 7, which is exciting.

Sim racing has filled the gap during the pandemic, and I enjoyed taking part in ARG’s eSeries recently, but everyone is itching to get back to real racing again.

We haven’t raced for probably six months now so; hopefully, there won’t be too much pre-season rust or carnage from the anticipation.

It looks like back-to-back weekends in Austria, but after that, we’re not sure yet, so I’ll take it one race at a time and hopefully have an excellent start to the year.

Cheers,

OP

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