Brazil was another disaster for me, following on from Sepang in Malaysia. I am not going to go into too many details for fear of saying the wrong things and getting myself and others upset again, but I will say that I still feel that my time being disallowed in qualifying was very unfair, when others who made mistakes which were just as serious during the weekend and got away with it.
I feel my penalty only stood because it was too hard to redo qualifying so I had the circuit in the right slot...but it's still unfair that it was a team error the same as Jason Smith's was, yet because his COULD be overturned it was.
Anyway....as in Malaysia the track being in the wrong slot meant that my setup was far than good by the time the race came around and I was left with no time to fix it. I have to admit that I thought I had jagged a very good setup in the race. Starting from 17th on the grid, I was into 5th by the end of lap 3, however that's as far as I got, as my car also began to lose its tyre grip on lap three.
I had chosen a two stop strategy, and really with the tyres stuffed after lap 3 I now think maybe I should have started on a harder tyre compound. I think if I had done that I could have maybe put up a fair fight.
I also had a 60 second penalty for the race of course...another legacy of my disqualification on Saturday. So really with the car so bad by lap 8 I really thought that the whole excercise was somewhat futile. However I pressed on and at the end of lap 25 I made my first stop. I stuffed it up thinking I could change to another compound and didn't get out until 18 seconds had elapsed. I was back in about 13th place. I set a good out lap, but then coming out of the Curva Do Sol I lost the rear end, over corrected and then speared into the wall on the outside of Curva 2.
The left front wheel was torn off the car and that was it. Another fairly disappointing grand prix. I am still looking forwards though, maybe I will get all the bad luck over with in the first few grand prix and then the rest of the year will be smooth sailing. We will see, but we are only 3/17 through the year...long way to go.
Again Marco did well during the whole weekend. He has 5 points in the championship now (I think!) with me languishing with only 2. Still, it's one more than Mika Hakkinen has at the moment! LOL
I look forward now to Imola testing and then the San Marino Grand Prix, and with it I hope a change of luck. Hope to see you there!
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