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Friday, 25 January 2008 |
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Today, the DAMS team raced in the first round of the GP2 Asia Championship on
the Dubai circuit. Its two drivers met with mixed fortunes, as Jérôme d’Ambrosio
and Kamui Kobayashi finished in 11th and 13th positions respectively. The
Japanese driver, who set the eleventh-quickest time in practice, stalled at the
start of the formation lap and then drove an attacking race to fight his way
back up through the field. His Belgian team-mate ran into a problem in
qualifying, which dropped him to twenty-first spot on the grid. He then had an
error-free race and put on one of the best performances of the afternoon.
Eric Boullier, team manager: “At the end of qualifying we were a bit
disappointed, and we knew that it would be difficult to play a leading role in
the race. Kamui paid a heavy price for his small mistake, but the GP2 car’s
clutch is very tricky and it often catches out rookie drivers. The positive
aspect of the day is that both our drivers had steady races o n their first
outing in GP2. Their consistency helped them to overtake almost half the field
and that shows just how competitive they are. If we manage to start higher up on
the grid in the future, then we can score points on a regular
basis.”
Kamui Kobayashi
11th in qualifying.
13th in the
race.
“I stalled at the start of the formation lap and that effectively
ruined my race. It was entirely my fault and I’m really sorry for the team, but
I’ve learned my lesson. After this incident I started from the pit road in last
place. We decided to change tyres very early on to gain a few positions over the
race distance. Our strategy paid off and I pulled back 11 places in relation to
where I started. The car was very consistent and I didn’t make any mistakes
after the start, but we’ve still got a lot of hard work to do if we want to
win.”
Jérôme d’Ambrosio
21st in qualifying.
11th in the
race.
“Given that qualifying d idn’t go very well for me the race result
is pretty positive! . Thanks to an early stop and good consistency I managed to
pull back ten places, which isn’t too bad. I could have done better if I hadn’t
been stuck behind a slower driver for twenty-five laps. I just couldn’t get
past. I think my car had a small problem and that penalised my top speed. We’ll
do everything we can to identify it for tomorrow. The ideal thing would be to
score some points in the second race.”
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