In World Series only Jack Keithley took part for the DHR SimCraft team in Grid1. A late call by the team which resulted in Jack not participating in Qualifying was in fact a good call. Missing the Turn 1 incidents, Jack found himself in 9th under the Safety Car. Due to Timons accident soon after the restart, Jack found himself in 8th. After passing Witzorreck Jack caught up behind Randu Muru who was in 4th. Being one of the only 1 stoppers, after the drivers made their first of two stops Jack found himself in 4th place. After being passed by some of the two stoppers Jack found himself finishing in 7th from 26th on the grid, with a comfortable gap back to Fred Gosling.
The second event of the weekend was World Trophy, with Muhammed Patel taking his second consecutive pole position. Ivan Kaloyanov had a disappointing weekend and qualified 12th. Patel held the lead at the start and with Henri Viirok holding up the Precision Motorsport cars he was able to pull out a solid lead up front. Ivan had various issues in the race, losing his front wing at the start and in addition to that had to pit for repairs twice, both times with no front and rear wings. Ivan did still come home in 12th. Patel had a fairly uneventful race, controlling the pace and lead from start to finish, winning his first race of the season, DHR's first win in 2010.
The final race was in the Auto GP Formula Sim-Racing World Championship, and qualifying didn't go to plan for the Estrada DHR SimCraft team. Tom Eley started from the pitlane due to a penalty, and John-Eric Saxen qualified in 18th position. However, the pair stayed out of trouble and John was in the hunt for 7th position, however, an unfortunate accident occurred on Lap 65, where he drove into the side of the retired Ash Racings car of Lee Morris. Eley retired on lap 35 with incident damage.
Jack Keithley, DHR SimCraft World Series driver commented: “I got through Pre-Qualifying quite easy which was good. Then, with a team decision to not participate in Qualifying, I started on the back row. It was a good decision as we missed the incidents at the start. The car felt great for the first stint but I had damage in the second stint loosing me around one second per lap. In the end I came 7th which was more than I expected starting from 26th. Hopefully in the upcoming races I will be more consistent and will be able to get more Top 10 finishes.”
Muhammed Patel, DHR SimCraft World Trophy driver commented: “It is a brilliant feeling to win at Monaco, and two years in a row, the car was really under me. Hopefully I can be consistent on the podium, and get a few more wins. In addition to this it is good to see the team on a whole having solid results consistently. Consistent points at WC and WS. Hopefully we can keep up the good form, and build on it.”
Damian Dainhumain, DHR GP team leader commented: “It was a good weekend overall for the team, with the main highlight of Patel’s great win in World Trophy, our first win in FSR this year. It gives the team a nice gap to 4th position in the standings, and we can use this momentum to try and close the gap on the Precision teams above us. In World Series Jack drove a great race from the back to finish 7th, but we have work to do for the next events to get us up the table in the standings. Obviously in the World Championship am disappointed after the late incident Saxen unfortunately got caught up in, as it looked a certainty we was on for more points, but that’s racing, the positive thing is that we are consistently in the hunt for points each race, we’ve just suffered some bad luck in most of the races so far.”
All results and standings can be found here : http://gpcos.formula-simracing.net/league.php?leagueid=4&type=introduction&menu=season
By Muhammed Patel
