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Formula Sprint 2
Japanese Grand Prix
Suzuka International Racing Course
Tuesday 2nd of April 2024 19:00:00
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May 28, 2012
Published on tags: Superleague
After six races, new team, Green Stripes Racing, has amassed five retirements alongside their failure to start the race in Abu Dhabi. Despite these setbacks however, the rookie German team sit fifth in the constructors championship; best of the new teams and just five points behind defending champions Red Archer VRT. Heading into the seventh round of the season, the team is confident that they can continue their recent run of form.

The team was left ruing an early race incident in Monaco which saw reserve driver Carr-Smith lose the lead, and any chance of victory, after suffering a lapse in concentration at the circuit's infamous Tabac corner. It was a race that the team believe they could have won had things gone to plan, with the majority of the front-runners experiencing a number of issues throughout the race, the victory was there for the taking. Instead, Carr-Smith finished only third, eighteen seconds behind the hotly contested duel for victory between Morris and Rowland.

Whilst such an opportunity may not be presented to the team in Canada, the team remains confident of a strong race result, a team press release stating that Carr-Smith would once again be in the car, this time substituting the absent Christoph Lichtenstein who is unable to attend the Grand Prix due to priorcommitments.

The team has carried out an abundance of simulation work since the Monaco GP, a move in which the team hoped to discover a solution for the lack of performance that hindered the team's efforts in previous events; in particular their straight line speed which many believe to be a consequence of the BMW engine, an engine that is widely known to require vast amounts of cooling in comparison to its competitors.

Carr-Smith, who as previously stated will be substituting for Lichtenstein in Montreal was clear in his intentions for the upcoming race:

"So far I have played down our expectations, at Hungary in particular we knew we had a good pace, but it wasn't until qualifying that we knew where we stood compared to our closest rivals. For Montreal we have done a significant amount of work to optimise the package that we have and we think we're in a good position for the race. From our simulation work, we're definitely getting the most out of what we have available to us in terms of car performance here.

Of course the race will be difficult, the five place penalty I got for an incident in Monaco will make things a little tougher, but you can definitely overtake here, it's not impossible as many found in Monaco - not that we struggled in that department thanks to the work our engineers have done on the behaviour of the car inturbulentair.

In all honesty, I expect to come away with nothing less than a top five finish and I will be extremely disappointed if we are not in a position to at least challenge for the podium; anything more than that would be difficult given our grid demotion, but we'll see what happens."