October 16, 2016

 

The Cornish squad reflects on the COTA round of the Superleague - an luckless outing for the team despite a good performance by the drivers.

It was unfortunately another pointless result for the team, in Austin, Texas; though not for the lack of trying on our drivers parts. Yet another disconnection for one of our drivers (all 3 Bart, Dan and Sven have suffered this fate this year; multiple times for Bart now) stole away vital points in our battles with Woods and Red Archer.

Dan sat out qualifying and started from the rear. Bart qualified an excellent fifth.

Dan's start was good and he had already made up 6-7 positions after half a lap, but then on the long straight Jarl Teien decided to make multiple contacts to the rear of his car and then drive him clean off the road at the following left-hander by crashing into him. It was an ugly move that damaged Dan's suspension. Pitting for repairs couldn't solve the problem and after trying 3 laps he had to retire the car.

Bart's start had also been good, straight up to fourth. Canapino demoted him to fifth using his superior straight-line speed and then Bart settled in. He ran a few laps longer on his tyres then those around him and so suffered a slight under-cut. By mid-distance he was running around the 6-8th mark, depending on pitstops of those around him, and looking very comfortable when connection was lost, and with it enough points to have moved us up to 5th. It's another shame (only two races ago he suffered it on the warm-up lap when starting on the front row) and I think he wasn't the only sufferer of this fate here either.

We have only two races of the season to go and I think the battle of 5-7th is going to be very close indeed. I'm confident though in our car and drivers that we are the team that can come out on top of this fight.

#12 De Vos: DNF
#83 Brewer: DNF

Points: 146
Position: 6th