Faster Than Speed finally ended its streak of retirements in the FSR World Championship by seeing the checkered flag for the first time since the Hungarian GP in August.
However, it was a difficult race at Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina circuit, with a back-of-the-grid penalty plus a conservative tyre choice which did not pay off leaving Patrick De Wit outside the point-scoring positions.
In the World Championship division, Patrick De Wit was unable to take part in the Qualifying session due to carrying a back-of-the-grid penalty for a technicality on the last GP's post-race verification. He started the race from 19th place.
Patrick made a great start, turning 13th into Turn 1 before pulling off good moves on Lapchin and Brljak to move up to 11th. Patrick drove a good race, surprising everyone with a very long 28-lap stint. The conservative hard-tyre choice did not work as expected, however, with the tyres unable to extract enough performance out of the FTS-P11 while rubber was new. Things got further complicated when Patrick made a mistake on lap 51, hitting the barriers and having to do an unscheduled stop for a new front wing. He eventually finished the race in 13th place.
Patrick De Wit (13th): "With no track time to test anything and starting at the rear of the field, I finished a race again, so all drivers betting on the lap I would retire on have lost their money. Great start, went from 19th to 11th on the first lap. Race today was full of unknowns for me, I was on hard tyres which were the wrong choice, 11th was going to be the maximum today. But in the end, I had a spin and ended 13th after a long pitstop. Great to have finished a race again today!"
Faster Than Speed now heads to the Interlagos circuit for the season finale Brazilian GP, where the team will be hoping to end the season on a high. FTS has great memories from the venue, with Florian Pechon winning and securing double WS Advanced titles in 2008, Patrick De Wit climbing to the WC podium in 2007 and Christian Smirnoff celebrating his 2006 WS Ace title with a victory. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news and live coverage from Brazil!
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Faster Than Speed
Press Release
http://www.fts-racing.net
