John Bryant-Meisner will return to racing in 2013 after an accident during testing last spring forced him to halt his single-seater campaign. The Swede, who is now 20, will be retained by Performance Racing as part of their German F3 lineup.
Bryant-Meisner first made an international appearance in single-seaters in 2010, during the Most round of the Formula Renault 2.0 NEC with Koiranen Motorsport. The team signed him on for a full season the next year, with the Swede tackling FR2.0 NEC and the Eurocup. He finished fifteenth in the latter with two sixth-place finishes, but was fifth in the former, taking his maiden podium in the series at the very track he made his debut on.
In 2012, Bryant-Meisner joined Performance Racing for a German F3 campaign. He scored 24 points at the opening round at Zandvoort with a podium finish in the reverse-grid race, but was ruled out of the rest of the season after an unfortunate testing accident at Rockingham.
“I?m obviously excited to be back on the ATS Formula 3 Cup grid together with my mates at Performance Racing in 2013,” said Bryant-Meisner. “I feel as strong today as I did before the crash, and the doctors ? as well as my personal trainers at Pro Performance over in England ? have done an amazing job. The first indications suggested that I would be out of racing for at least 18 months, but the recovery process has been surprisingly quick and I?m now fully focussed on preparing myself in the best possible way for the on-track challenges ahead. I know very well that the competition will be tough ? and it?s hardly an advantage to have missed out on most of last year ? but I?m massively determined to get going and my target is to be fighting at the top of the timesheets from race one.”
The team principal Bobby Issazadhe was also excited at the continuation of the partnership: “John has recuperated faster than we could ever have dreamed about, and we are genuinely thrilled to be able to welcome him back to the grid with us for the new campaign. He has shown immense determination and impetus on his road to recovery, and he put in a great performance at the tests in Spain in December, where he drove better than ever despite not having sat in a racing car for months. John?s ability to transform the mentally wearing time outside of the cockpit into something positive only goes to prove his psychological strength, and I?m convinced that we can look forward to a very good season together.”
In 2012, Performance Racing ran three additional drivers in German F3, aside from Bryant-Meisner. Aussie Mitchell Gilbert was the highest-placed out of the Performance crew at the end of the year, finishing the season in fourth. Swiss driver Yannick Mettler completed his full-time campaign with the team in eighth in the standings, while Luca Stolz, running in only five out of the nine championship events as part of the “Cup” class, managed tenth.