For the second World Series by Renault meeting in succession, the rain bucketed down and both qualifying sessions for Round 7 at Donington Park were extremely wet.ÿ Surprisingly, British team Carlin Motorsport weren’t fighting for pole position as they were hoping to at their home track, instead Australian Will Power and his Austrian teammate Andreas Zuber were fighting to be in the top ten, haunted by car troubles in what was a very disappointing day for both drivers.

After both qualifying sessions Power and Zuber found themselves ranked low in their groups 6th & 7th and twice 8th respectively, a very uncharacteristic result for the team who since the first round at Zolder have been highly competitive throughout all qualifying sessions, Power alone having recorded three poles and 8 top four grid spots to date.

The Carlin team had found something that was a-miss but were unable to resolve the problem before second qualifying, thankfully though, aware of the cause of their woes - a problem which affected both cars - they are able to fix it.ÿ Although, this is only the consolation prize for the team after qualifying so far down the grid, they are now concentrating on tomorrow where they hope they can gain back some of the lost ground.

“Naturally the whole team was hoping for a much better result today because we are usually very strong in qualifying.” Commiserated Power.ÿ After first qualifying we knew we knew we had a problem with the cars, but the first session was also tough because of the amount of yellow (caution) flags, making it difficult to set a quick lap.”

In fact, after first qualifying many complaints were made to the stewards office about the lack of regard for the caution flags and one driver, Tristan Gommendy, was penalised by being demoted to the back of the grid for race one after he spun under yellows. A lucky escape for the Frenchman after Indian driver, Karun Chandhok was banned for three race meetings following a similar incident at Le Mans.

Will managed to stay in the top 15 with 12th place after the first qualifying but was not any luckier for the second session when he finished up16th once the two groups were merged.ÿ “After second qualifying it was really very disappointing because without our car trouble our data shows we are very quick. But the team has done a great job to find the problem, luckily for us because it’s worth a heap of time.ÿ Although it’s going to be very tough to make our way back to the front tomorrow, it’s not totally impossible to get a good result, especially if it stays wet again.”


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Disappointingly, today’s races didn’t result in any points for either of the two Carlin drivers after car trouble in wet qualifying yesterday forced lowly grid positions on Aussie Will Power and his Austrian teammate Andreas Zuber.

Power pushed hard in race one from 12th place and although he quickly moved up well into the top 10 at the start of the 19 lap sprint race, a racing incident with Yugoslavian, Milos Pavlovic broke Will’s front wing and forced him to pit for a new nose cone. Rejoining under Safety Car in 21st place, Will weaved his way through the 30 car field at the restart in the hope to get a top 10 finish. However with only a few laps remaining, will backed off to try for the fastest lap and the accompanying point.ÿ Though, Macau GP winner, Tristan Gommendy had started from the rear of the field and pitted for new rubber eventually taking the prize from him and Will took the chequered flag in 13th place. Meanwhile, Zuber was forced to take a drive through penalty after jumping the start and finished 19th.

The relentless rain from yesterday was no where to be seen and Power started from the 8th row on a dry track for the pit-stop race this afternoon.ÿ After the disappointment of the weekend, Power was determined to get up the front and got a mega start, making it from 15th up to an impressive 7th place on the first lap.ÿ Pole man Eric Salignon helped Will’s situation when he crashed with Jaap Van Lagen and both went out of the race at turn one causing the Safety Car to be deployed.

Right behind Zuber in the Safety Car cue, Will gained another position when Pastor Maldonado spun out from P1 on an oil spill and although the restart was quite uneventful for Power, he quickly moved up to 5th and then 4th place when Tristan Gommendy pitted from 3rd and he overtook Danilo Dirani at turn 5.ÿ The team took the opportunity to bring Will into pit on lap 7 with 20 remaining, and after a good stop Will rejoined in P12, one of the first of those who had pitted.ÿ

In the running for a top position, Will moved up to P10 in the following four laps and when Zuber pitted on lap 12, both cars were looking at a podium finish – Zuber exited the pit-lane as Will was flying into Turn 1, Zuber later claimed that he didn’t see his teammate when the two collided finishing both their races.

“I saw Andi (Zuber) come out of the pits and he let Adrian (Valles) through who was running in third, there was a visible gap that I went for and I would have easily made it around the corner.ÿ Andi explained later that he didn’t see me at all, but I was committed to the corner – it’s a shame that we had to finish off a troublesome weekend like that.” Said the Australian afterwards.

“It was one of those weekends where things went wrong from the start, but in the end it’s just racing – you have to push hard to make up places when you qualify back in the pack and when you are back there, incidents happen.ÿ The team did a great job with the pit-stops and the strategy would have paid off for both of us in race two – we’ve just got to look to Estoril now.”

The World Series by Renault visit Estoril in Portugal for the penultimate round of the championship on October 1 & 2 in three week’s time.


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