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Ireland to start 3rd in Chinese A1GP thriller |
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Saturday, 15 December 2007 |
Adam Carroll will start tomorrow’s Sprint Race from third for Belmayne A1 Team
Ireland in round four of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport at the Zhuhai
International Circuit.
Off the back of topping the timesheets on Friday, the Irish squad were in positive mood heading into qualifying for Sunday’s races. After a fantastic run on new tyres in
the first qualifying session of the day, Ireland were still on top but after problems with
grip on the second new set of tyres in Q2 were just beaten by Germany and
Switzerland in the dying minutes. However, with a rolling start for the first of two
races tomorrow, Adam is in a great position to take another strong podium finish for
A1 Team Ireland.
In the final two sessions of the day, problems arose with neither of the final sets of old and new tyres allowing Adam to get the performance out the car that both he
and the team knew was there. After two frustrating runs, the team will start 13th
on the grid for tomorrow’s Feature Race, but with a standing start, two pit
stops and 69-minutes of racing action, there is plenty of ground to be made up
that Adam has proved he is more than capable of doing following his amazing
drive from 18th to 6th at Brno.
Adam Carroll: “Its really strange. We went out and were P1 in qualifying one and the car feltgreat so I pushed hard and got a good lap time. We then put on the
second set of new tyres and I felt I could improve but the grip just wasn’t there. It was incredible, the car felt good but the lap time just wasn’t there, I’ve never
had that before. The third and fourth sets were the same. I thought I’d done a
good lap but the time was terrible and none of the sets of tyres felt anything
like the first ones. We now need to go through all the data and try to figure out why when everyone else went faster, we went slower but I honestly can’t answer that
one yet. P3 is pretty good for Sprint race though and we can get a good result from
there.”
Dan Walmsley, Race Engineer: “I think in the Sprint Race qualifying we could have even been on pole, we felt there was more time to come in the second run but the
set of tyres didn’t really give us the grip we were looking for, but overall we are
quite happy with third. The Feature Race qualifying is a complete mystery
at the moment. We just lost time; we lost nearly a second to our Sprint Race qualifying without making any major changes to the car so we’ve really got to
understand why that happened and make sure it doesn’t happen in tomorrow’s race. We had a slight fuel pressure problem during the session but we overcame that
and the team worked well today. I think the team’s very disappointed with the
overall results so we’ve got a lot of work to do for tomorrow. I’m confident
we wont be finishing the Feature Race where we’re starting it and I’m sure Adam
will put on a great show for everyone again, but we need to make sure Adam is
starting the races up the front not having to fight his way up from the back like sadly he had to do at Brno, and he’s got to do again here.”
Mark Gallagher, Team Principal: "Sprint qualifying went well and it is very satisfying to be in the top three- matching our best ever qualifying. There was a clear
lack of speed in the Feature
qualifying which is going to be investigated as Adam felt sure he was much quicker.”
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