Aleshin extends championship lead in Hungary
04 July 2010Mikhail Aleshin extended his lead in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series today, following his second podium of the weekend in Hungary. The Russian heads into the summer break with an 11 point lead in the championship after finishing third this afternoon, recording the fastest lap in the process. Team mate Jake Rosenzweig also enjoyed a strong race with his second points scoring position of the weekend in eighth.
Having qualified fifth and ninth respectively this morning, Aleshin and Rosenzweig took to the grid for the 40 minute race this afternoon. Both Carlin drivers immediately made up one place each at the start; Aleshin moving up to fourth with Rosenzweig seventh. By lap three, Rosenzweig was fending off the attentions of his former F3 Euro Series team mate Brendon Hartley while Aleshin was catching Greg Mansell while fending off Daniel Zampieri behind.
As the race entered the pit stop window, Aleshin was one of the first to make a stop on lap six. Once in the pits, the Carlin team changed the front rather than the rear tyres, in an effort to complete a quicker stop and gain track position. Two laps later, Rosenzweig made his stop with the Carlin mechanics again changing the two front tyres. Once all drivers had made their mandatory stop, Aleshin had jumped a place to third, while Rosenzweig was still seventh.
With the pitstops completed, the racing action continued. Rosenzweig was involved in a short wheel to wheel battle with Anton Nebylitskiy, which resulted in a substantial tyre mark on Rosenzweig's sidepod and Nebylitskiy running wide off track. Having survived that enthusiastic attack, Rosenzweig had to fend off the attentions of Jan Charouz.
At the front Aleshin was still third, but as his rear tyres continued to wear he was quickly being caught by Zampieri and Mansell. The gap continued to decrease, until Zampieri was right on the tail of the Carlin man. The duo raced nose to tail for the rest of the race, with Aleshin continuing to defend hard for the final podium position.
Aleshin's team mate Rosenzweig meanwhile was involved in a battle of his own and now had Hartley to contend with. The former team mates were in a close battle for eighth, with Rosenzweig holding on to his position. Clearly pushing hard, Hartley took too much kerb at turn three and spun, leaving him stranded in a dangerous position on track. With only two laps left the race was brought to an early conclusion by a red flag, with Aleshin still third and Rosenzweig eighth.
Reflecting on his race, Aleshin said, "I think the weekend went really well for us, although of course it would have been better to win both races! Today was quite hard, the car felt really good after the pit stops, but then the tyres started to go off and I really struggled to hold off Zampieri. The team worked really well today, they chose the perfect strategy for me so I have to say thanks to them."
Trevor Carlin added, "The team have done a fantastic job this weekend. We didn't have huge expectations ahead of this round - it's a very difficult circuit - so to come away with both drivers scoring points in both races and for Mikhail to increase his lead in the championship is a great result for us. Our pit stop strategy really contributed to our success today; our engineers did a great job this weekend."