Sky Sports F1 Online catches up with British rising star Jon Lancaster who has hit the headlines in GP2 after two wins in eight days at Silverstone and the Nurburgring.
How good does it look for your own ability and 'stock' in the racing world that you are partnering the reigning Formula Renault 3.5 Champion, who was tipped for an F1 seat and is Sauber's reserve driver and you are beating him?"Exactly, that is how you have to look at it. You have all these guys in GP2 like [Felipe] Nasr, [James] Calado and [Sam] Bird that have F1 connections and doing all sorts of things, but a lot of that is just down to financial backing. They are able to do it year-on-year and progress and have people that are helping them and that is how they have got to this stage.
"It doesn't meant that they are any better or faster, so to jump in and do the results we have done on basically nothing - Franz has been a real gentleman and helped me out and given me the opportunity - it has been fantastic and we have to keep building on it and improving on it and prove that I am capable of beating these guys. I have done now and I need to keep doing that consistently and hopefully that will present me with an opportunity to be in Formula 1."
You picked up your first GP2 win in front of your home crowd at Silverstone. Is there a more special place to take your maiden victory?"No, no, no of course not! We were quick all weekend - it was just a shame with the weather in qualifying that we couldn't start further up the grid. It was the first lap I had done of Silverstone in over three years in the dry so it was always going to be difficult, but I knew the car was good even from the one-lap we did in qualifying, so I knew we would be competitive in the race.
"To do what we did [in the Feature Race] - I was actually last into the first corner - so to work our way up to fifth, passing people and with the speed that we had I think we could have won that race and the first one is the one you really want to win. But we controlled the second race start to finish and we managed to back that up again at the Nurburgring."
You mentioned that money is hard to come by in GP2 - what are the chances we see you in Formula 1 when opportunities there are now also heavily dependent on money?"That is a good question! We are working on that - I can only show what I am doing on the track at the moment and I work off the scenes as well.
"My dad and I have a few more contacts now with people that have taken notice - some we have known for a while but it's only now that I have the opportunity to show what I can do and backup what I have been saying and that has an even larger effect. So that has really come on since Barcelona and hopefully we can keep it going and turn it into something that could potentially put me into a Formula 1 car."
