TiRE News medal 5000 11 years 197 days ago (edited 11 years 194 days ago)
The iGP Race Experience (T.i.R.E.)
RD 12 – Belgium iGP Pro Tier
Pre-Race:
Arrow were able to secure a new agreement with
Murk after running
Tifosi engines last race. While the exact details are not known it is believe that they are paying a lot more per engine then they were originally offered.
Tifosi are not publicly saying anything but are believed to be furious after they made a massive commitment last round and expanded facilities back at their headquarters.
Umbrella and
Orange Lizards seemed confident they would be running KERS providing Friday testing went ok. This would give us the first race of the season with all teams running KERS. There was some very late breaking news
as D Zukas walked away from his seat at
Arrow and was replaced by
C Quinn. We are sure to hear more of the details post-race.
Qualifying:
Polar Motorsports have really found something on Saturdays as they locked out the front row for the 3rd straight race with
R Graca just ahead of
A Muller.
MC Racing had good long run pace but could not get the most out of their tires over 1 lap but were still able to hold onto the second row with
S McNamara &
V Kettunen.
A Williams starts 5th for
Orange Lizards with teammate
J Torres again struggling and starting 8th
. Arrow has had many a good qualifying session this year only for it to turn sour on Sunday. So despite a season best result for the team with
C Quinn 6th &
A Wiz 7th there was almost no celebrations at all going on down in the
Arrow garage as they understand points are only pad on Sunday.
Star Racing again elected to qualify on hards and started 9th & 10th with
Aso ahead of
F Hoff.
Umbrella also qualified on the hard compound but has not been able to keep up with the pace of development of those teams around them and with the departure of DPG find themselves as the last team on the grid in 11th & 12Th.
Race Results:
The race turned out to be one of if not the most exciting race of the year and many records fell. Despite once again having the same top 4 finish in their normal positions it was a very very close race indeed. We normally see 5th place finish some 60sec+ behind the leader however today the top 10 was covered by less than 35sec. For the first time this season we seen 3 different race leaders and not only that but they were from 3 different teams. Race winner
R Graca for
Polar,
F Hoff led for
Star Racing on lap 10 before he pitted while
C Quinn led on lap 14 & 15 then again on lap 23 & 24 for
Arrow. This was the first time
Arrow has lead a race all season and not only did they lead but they ran 1-2 at one stage. There were six different drivers who ran in the top 2 spots and amazingly every team had at least 1 driver in the top four at some point in the race (9/12 drivers ran top 4).
C Quinn for
Arrow was the first non-race winner to take the fastest lap this season. It was also the first race of the season we had every driver finish on the lead lap.
The decision to run a 2 stopper or 3 stopper did not seem to make too much difference with both
Arrow drivers,
A Williams (Orange) &
R Aso (Star) running a 3 stopper on softs while everyone else ran a 2 stopper. Of the 2 stoppers
Polar,
MC &
Orange ran S-H-H while
Star ran H-H-S and
Umbrella went H-H-H post-race calculations show there was only 1-2 sec difference between strategies with H-H-H or S-S-S-S giving the most consistent lap times depending on traffic. However with just 2 sec covering the top 3 and 2 sec again covering 7-8-9th teams really need to ensure they execute the right strategy depending on their track position and perfect pit stops if they are to pick up those valuable championship points for the remainder of the season.
Behind the top 4 in
R Graca (Polar),
S McNamara (MC),
A Muller (Polar),
V Kettunen (MC).
Arrow finally converted a good Saturday into solid points and picked up almost just as many points this round as they had all season by finishing 5th with
C Quinn on debut and
A Wiz in 6th.
Orange Lizards continued to drop a little further back for the 3rd straight race and were lucky to finish in 7th & 8th with
A Williams and
J Torres respectively.
F Hoff for
Star was held up in his first stint and it ended costing him 2 positions as he finished 9th but continues to outshine his much more established teammate in
R Aso who just wanted to get out of the car and immediately left the track after finishing 10th.
Umbrella Racing will need to bring some major updates or
maybe look at hiring some new drivers if they want to hold onto 5th in the championship.
Umbrella failed to score any points for only the second time this season
as D Gerario &
P Klein were 11th & 12th over 10 sec back of the car ahead. More concerning is that they have only scored 1 point in the last 2 rounds compared to
Arrow who have picked up 20 points and now only sit 17points behind with 5 races to go.
Full race results can be found here:
http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=race-result/172619#race