May 04, 2016

 

The Cornish outfit take a look back at how the Turkish round of the 2016 Superleague season fared for them.

The exciting Istanbul Park was host to the fifth round of Superleague this week. We at Kernow Sport turned up with a car tweaked and upgraded considerably. Weather conditions in qualifying were a bit variable but we still managed to get both cars into the top-8 on the grid. A feat the team had never before achieved. The race stayed dry.

TM Wicks: With both my drivers lining up together on Row 4 I was biting my nails for the start and hoping to see them finish the opening lap in one piece. This they managed and from there set about making inroads into catching the guys ahead of them. Bart put in some good fights with the Nordsjoens and a Storm, running the whole race in the mid-top-10 positions; at one point even setting fastest lap. By taking a late extra pitstop to reduce the time spent on harder tyres he finished in 8th place for a fourth top-10 result in 5 races.

Dan had more of a chase on from the start. Having dropped to 11th he had to pass the Wauters cars. Once past he managed to pull away and bridge the gap, eventually closing in on Bart's group ahead. His strategy meant a longer stint on hard tyres at the end, and a small spin too meant he had to settle for 10th. He opens his scoring account for the season with 6 points.

The team result also means its our first double top-10 result in Superleague since way back in our debut season of 2012! And we've managed to score points in every race this season so far. We hope that can continue at Monaco. A race that for sure will be brutal, but we, yet again, will have a large packet of useful upgrades to stick on the car.

#12 De Vos (8th): I was really looking forward to this race, Istanbul is one of my favourite tracks and we wanted to continue our decent form of previous races. Q was good, with P8, starting P7 after penalties. Had a good start, took no risks and followed the cars in front of me. Made my first stop to try and make the undercut on Fidock. From there on there was plenty of action with up to 4-car battles. When most drivers around me switched to hards for their final stint I decided to put on an extra set of mediums and only use the hards for a few laps. Fortunately I was able to overtake some cars pretty quick without losing too much time. In the end I came charging towards P7, but the race was a few corners too short. Unfortunately Dan had some bad luck, but still was able to get a good result and finish 10th; double top 10 for Kernow brings us more points. Let's hope we can grab some more at Monaco in 2 weeks' time.

#83 Brewer (10th): In qualifying I couldn't put a lap together too well, and when I finally did I got held up in the final sector which didn't cost me much, but the gaps were so close it was a few positions. Lap 1 I don't really know what to say about it. Melim then clouted my rear at t1 after I passed him, I think this damaged my car but I'm not sure because the damage may have been from L1, but from then on my car was quite loose on the power and especially up the hill through t2. Managed to break away and caught back up to the group in front when I found I was sharing a pit box with Bart which cost me quite a few seconds. I then came out into a battle because of this which cost me another few seconds. Standard race from there on, the damage meant the primes were basically blocks of ice and I finally spun through T2 losing a single position. We weren't as fast here but at least I got to the finish despite best efforts of others to prevent that. Good points for Kernow and well done to the top 3 and Bart for great drives.

Points: 43
Position: 9th