Jeddah Corniche Circuit

SAUDI ARABIAN GRAND PRIX

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April 21, 2012
Published on tags: Superleague
Midnight Motorsport have vowed to resolve the issues that caused the team's dreadful start in Hungary with the team having identified a fault within the start system used on each of the cars.

Euler and Rowland secured their third consecutive lock out of the front row before disaster struck on the start with both Ferrari engines seemingly losing drive as the cars moved away from the line. Both Rowland and Euler lost a considerable number of positions with Euler having to pit due to rear end damage caused by contact with Nordsjoen's Joe Consiglio who was left with nowhere to go off of the start.

Acting Team Manager Dave Carr-Smith said that the team was aware of what had caused the issues and that the team would take steps to ensure that theoccurrencedoes not repeat itself in two weeks time at the Spanish GP in Barcelona.

"Unfortunately what happened on the start was a combination of many things, we ran a much longer first gear here than we have done in previous races due to the nature of the circuit; the Hungaroring is a circuit where you need to make use of all of the gears available to you due to the tight sections of the track here, where-as at a circuit such as Yas Marina we were able to run with a gear set that met our requirements for the start as well as meeting those general requirements of the circuit layout.

The gear ratio shouldn't have caused that much of a problem, as you saw from the Green Stripes cars that ran an identical ratio. Unfortunately on our cars however, the clutch wasn't engaged for long enough in order to ensure a smooth delivery of the power off of the line and as such, when the clutch was released, the cars had far too few revs and bogged down, effectively cutting power to the engine.

We have identified the issue and we will certainly be taking measures to ensure that we don't see a repeat of this situation in Barcelona. The team can only apologise to Joe, and to Nordsjoen, for affecting their race through this unfortunate occurrence.We are fortunate to have Lukas and Nick driving for the team as both put in great drives to recover from their individual setbacks; Lukas in particular given he had to overcome two unscheduled pitstops, a significant penalty and he still managed to bring the car home in sixth position. Of course Nick recovering from the issues on the start and an incident with a backmarker to take the win goes a long way to easing some of the disappointment from the event. We can only put this race behind us and move on to Barcelona where we hope to see a much quieter race for both of our drivers."

Rowland's victory moves him to the head of the table in the championship standings with a single point advantage over team-mate Euler, with Morris and Consiglio a further eight and fourteen points back respectively. However, Midnight Motorsport's advantage in the constructor's championship received a healthy boost with the team now sporting a forty-seven point advantage over Nordsjoen and fifty-two points over Draig.