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ETEC Disappointed Not To Build On Promising Practice And Qualifying
Having topped the timesheets on Friday with an electrifying lap from ETEC and Nissan GT Academy driver Jann Mardenborough much was expected from Jann and his teammates in todays two fifteen minute qualifying sessions for rounds 4/5/6 of the Toyota Racing Series, the second meeting of the five meeting Championship held across New Zealand’s diverse race tracks.
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As it turned out Mardenborough failed to match his performances from earlier but still turned in the best Result for an ETEC car with 10th place for Saturday’s race 1 and 7th position for race 2, with young Malaysian Akash Nandy putting in the surprise performance for the team with a brace of 11th places, just .058 off of his much fancied team mateS fastest time.
As has been the way in this years TRS, the remaining ETEC runners qualified in a pack just behind in 12th,13th and 15th for Tatiana Calderon, Tanart Sathirnthirakul and Andrew Tang respectively.
The cars lined up for race 1 at 3pm under clear skies and without threat of rain for the first time in a while and there was a certain sense of expectation as Austrian Lucas Auer led the cars away on the formation lap from pole position, the 18 year old nephew of F1 legend Gerhard Berger emerging as an early favorite for the 2013 TRS title.
Amazingly for the closely bunched and equally matched field of young racers the first lap was incident free, despite the narrow track and close proximity of the barriers at the Timaru Circuit. However this was not to last and it was ETEC who had the first casualty as charging Nandy went for a move on Madenborough for tenth only to collide with the back of the Welshman lifting his car into the air and braking the nose and front wig of the car. The team worked fast to replace the offending parts after Nandy limped back to the pits but with a lap lost the Malaysian was committed to a charge to the finish to salvage as many points as possible.
Elsewhere in the field Mardenborough continued in tenth and hooked onto the back of Latifi, but found it impossible to pass the Canadian whilst Tanart battled hard to keep Tatiana behind him for the remaining laps as Tang followed waiting to benefit from any repeat of the Nandy incident amongst his team mates.
At the line it was 10th, 11th,12th and 13th for ETEC who will be hoping for better in races 2 and 3 of the weekend,
Team Manager Trevor Sheumack said of the first race “Were not really happy with being in the midfield with all our cars, of course we want to be at the front and we have the potential to do it’
Jann Mardenborough had a difficult race “ I was struggling with a car suffering the effects of the mornings qualifying accident, we found that the steering column was bent, the gear shift was giving me issues and obviously the collision at the back of the car didn’t help matters” said the Welshman,“ We start higher tomorrow so hopefully we can fix the issues and get a result”
Tatiana Calderon felt that her race was a self fulfilling prophecy “ It was always going to be hard to pass with the cars being closely matched and the track being so narrow, I was much quicker than Tanart but couldn’t find room to even try a move”
Akash Nandy was obviously disappointed after his great qualifying “ I tried to get past Jann, I had the speed but I moved for the inside and ran out of room as he turned in”, “ at least I made the finish, It will be hard to get a result from last place on the grid (in race 2) but race 3 should be a chance for a good result”.
Andrew Tang raced well without mistakes getting a solid result as he learns to get to grips with single seaters.
The Toyota Racing Series resumes tomorrow, Sunday 20th January with races 4 and 5 of the 15 race championship at the Timaru International Raceway.
PaddockTalk Perspective
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