Champ Car Race, Long Beach source: champcarworldseries.com / dalecoyneracing.com After a demanding weekend with mechanical breakdown during the first qualifying, Jan Heylen makes an amazing 7th place in Long Beach, California at his debut race the opening race of the new Champ Car Season. Although the free practice went well, the 14th place in qualifying was not a bad result considering the problems in the qualifying and lost of track-time Jan Heylen: "I hoped at a little closer staring position than 14th, but of course considering the problems that plagued us during qualifying we are always aware that worse was available as well. I also felt like I didn't get the best out of my last set of new tires, I have to get used to running on the soft compound for qualifying." The race: After a spectacular first lap with the obvious crash in the 1st turn Jan got thru with just an unfortunately damaged front wing. Although Heylen did great avoiding the congestion while running around the crashed cars, a piece of debris was run over and caused damage to the front wing. This only became obvious when the green flag was raised and the cars were back up to speed. The loss of down force forced Heylen to Pit the car under the second yellow caution and repairs -although performed flawlessly quick- caused about 40 seconds delay on the pit stop. After this stop Heylen was 30 seconds behind the pack but did a great job hunting down the cars and staying with it throughout the following rounds.
Recent Articles
|
Racing Multimedia
Recommendations |