Although threatening rain clouds hovered, both qualifying sessions remained dry today in Oschersleben (Germany), and Will Power stormed through qualifying one to place his Carlin Motorsport car on pole for the sprint race tomorrow, where he will once again line up beside championship rival Robert Kubica, on the front row.
The Australian from country town Toowoomba, spent Thursday and Friday learning the quick and busy track and come first qualifying he was in a fierce battle within his group with Frenchman Tristan Gommendy for pole position.˙
Will won the right to be first on track when he beat Draco driver, Cristian Montanari out of the pit-lane and immediately took the lead until, with 8 minutes to go, Gommendy surfaced on provisional pole for the first time.˙ The Carlin team took the opportunity to bring Will in to pit for new tyres and with 6 minutes remaining of the 15 minute session, Will was still playing leapfrog with the Frenchman.˙ Will jumped to the top of the times just before the chequered flag with a lap of 1min12.203sec, but was immediately demoted to second and then third place.˙
In a final bid to reclaim pole, Will’s last lap started badly with a not-so-hot first sector time after recovering from being held up by a slower car, but then to the delight of the team, Will put in a quick second sector followed by a blindingly fast final sector time to secure his third pole position of the season with a lap of 1min12.056sec.
Power’s group was out first for second qualifying and Will knew he would have to take pole to be on the front row again.˙ Small spits of rain drizzled onto the waiting cars only moments before the green flag, but luckily the storm didn’t eventuate and the number four car had provisional pole until the last lap of the session when, reminiscent of Will’s first qualifying, Marcus Winklehock came through to steal his P1 on the final lap.
Although, session two was inevitably faster and Will’s second in group will put him on the second row in P4 next to his teammate Andreas Zuber for the pit-stop race tomorrow afternoon.
“The track gets much quicker by the end of every session so the second group out is always faster.” Explained Power. “I’m very happy to be on pole for the sprint race, and to get it on the last lap was great, especially since I had trouble in my first sector.˙ 4th is okay for race two, I just got beaten by Winklehock on the last lap so it was very close but If I can get two good starts tomorrow it should be a good day for me.”
Ends//
NO POINTS FOR POWER ON RACE DAY
For immediate release August 07, 2005
Aussie, Will Power had a very disappointing run at Oschersleben today when he failed to finish in the points for either race.˙ The storm which had threatened finally arrived in time to drench the grid of cars prior to race one and although the start of race two was dry, the rain eventually fell again, catching out those like Will who were first to arrive at the wet part of the track.
Will took one point for pole in qualifying, though he wasn’t able to capitalize on his position in race one today.˙ Robert Kubica got Will off the start but the Carlin driver stayed as close as he could get to the polish driver through turn two in the heavy wet spray.˙ Drastically, Will fell victim to the slippery first corner on lap three and was unable to slow his car over the grass before the concrete wall – Will hit the wall, damaging the car and finishing his race.
Will maintained his P4 grid spot as the lights went out and was sandwiched between Marcus Winklehock and Tristan Gommendy for the first three laps of race two.˙ But disaster struck again when the rain fell on lap four and both Power and Gommendy who arrived first at the wet part of the track, spun off onto the grass.˙ Will kept the car running and was able to rejoin, albeit in a lowly 18th place.
Fellow Carlin driver Andreas Zuber came into pit on lap 7 from second place and it all went horribly wrong for the team, the pit-stop took much longer than expected when a wheel nut got stuck and Will, who was due to pit the next lap, had to cue behind his team-mate.˙ In the rush, Will’s car could only be fitted with dry weather tyres and inevitably he had to pit again on lap 11 to change to wets.
Will ran the rest of the 29 lap race with a strong vibration problem and, focusing on damage control, cautiously made his way up from 20th to 14th place before the chequered flag.
“It was a very disappointing weekend for me.” Said Will after race two. “I had a pretty good qualifying run yesterday and got a point for pole, but unfortunately got caught out by the rain in both races.
“The team did a great job to put the car back together before race two and everything was okay until the rain came again.˙ Now it’s just a matter of moving on and thinking about the next race at Donington.”
