March 29, 2016

 

After the Career Ladder series' completed their third rounds at the Sochi circuit in Russia, Kernow Sport team owner Mark Wick's gives us a rundown of the team's results.

The Sochi circuit in Russia was a new venue for the team and the league this season. A long, fast street circuit with which it appears our cars were fairly well suited. Bart and Dan were in the vehicles again and put in plenty of practice to build a good setup.

Our cars turned out to have the least number of upgrades of any team so it was a great thing to see Dan qualify in 6th, just 0.3s from pole position. A grid penalty, however, meant that he would start from the back row. Bart would line up in 11th, 0.7s from the front.

TM Wicks: "The race started and yet again first lap incidents saw both our drivers races affected. Bart had to avoid some midfield chaos and lost places and time. Dan unfortunately lost a wing and had to make an earlier than planned opening pit-stop which dropped him well back.

Despite this early setback I must applaud our drivers' determination and attitude. They both dug deep and made some good overtaking moves to climb back up the pack and into point's contention. In fact they were running such good times that some higher point?s positions were looking likely.

As some guys dropped out and others were passed on-track or on strategy, Dan found himself about to make an entry into the top 10 when a disastrous disconnection hit him just a few laps from the end, stealing away his first points of the season. Bart though found himself in a close fight with several guys that went right to the end: resulting in a great P6, just a tenth shy of 5th. It's the best result for one of our cars in 2 years.

Another 10 points was a good result, but again we had the pace for it to have been a bit more, but for the unlucky disconnection. Both drivers though have felt they have great pace and can definitely keep achieving good things with the car, especially as we make up some of our upgrade deficit to other teams for the next race."

#12 De Vos (6th): "There was a lot of preparation in the team for this round. Dan did an amazing job preparing this race. Qualifying was not as good as hoped, but P12 is not worse than what we achieved in previous races. The start was a complete mess, unfortunately both Kernow's were victim of T1 again. Luckily I was able to continue with only little damage. Our setup allowed for easy overtaking and I was able to make good use of it overtaking 4 cars on 4 laps and not losing time behind them. From there on it was a race to get back in the higher points positions. It seemed like we were able to make the Supersoft tyres work well, only having to do a few laps on the slower soft tyres. In the end I finished P6, an amazing result for myself and the team, we now have more points than we had at the end of last season so things can only get better from here on when we get some more development on the car."

#83 Brewer (DNF): "Another particularly unfortunate race for me. PC struggles meant I wasn't getting the performance I wanted, and that I was actually quite lucky I had a back of grid penalty. Qualifying P6 however showed what could have been. The race start I tried to be as careful as possible, but people re-joining the track at T2 after going off at T1 forced me into an unavoidable crash, losing my front wing and putting me back down to last way behind. I spent most of the race on my own trying to catch up, which I managed to do before the end of the race. Managed to recover it to P10 I think with 4 laps to go, but then my internet dropped and I disconnected, continuing the seemingly never ending bad luck. The car however felt great, and I feel without any issues (including the back of grid) a podium was on the cards, and our car was at this point the least upgraded car on the grid. Looking forward to getting back out there again without any issue and seeing what I can do."

Points: 23
Position: 9th