Eventful weekend at Silverstone

10 July 2011

It was a mixed weekend for Carlin’s GP3 team at Silverstone. A disappointing qualifying session was followed by some feisty racing once again by Conor Daly who finished 15th in race one and seventh in the second race of the weekend. Leonardo Cordeiro took a 18th and 23rd place finish. Daniel Morad was unable to take part in either race due to a severely damaged chassis following an accident in qualifying.

Race one was an incident filled event from the start, with a sudden rain shower throwing the race into chaos as the cars lined up n the grid. A handful of drivers took the decision to start on wet tyres with the majority of the field on staying on slicks, including Daly and Cordeiro.

Following a wet formation lap, it became clear that wets were the only option as the conditions continued to deteriorate and all the remaining drivers on slicks were forced to pit for wets instead of taking to the grid. Both Cordeiro and Daly pitted immediately for wet tyres and then had the job of fighting their way through the field. Both drivers did well to stay on track in the challenging and changing conditions, and by the chequered flag, Daly was 15th, while Cordeiro was 18th.

With several penalties applied to drivers for incidents in race one, Daly was elevated to 13th on the grid for race two on Sunday, while Cordeiro lined up 17th. Daly wasted no time in making further progress when the lights went out, and was on the attack from the outset. The young American was already eighth by the end of lap one and continued to push in an effort to climb into sixth, the first of the points paying positions.

Daly was one step closer on lap four when he passed Nico Muller for seventh place, and soon had sixth placed in his sights. The Carlin man continued to push but despite closing in on sixth placed man Nick Yelloly under pressure until the chequered flag, couldn’t quite find a way past.

Team mate Cordeiro meanwhile did well to recover from a full spin at Copse on lap three, but gained flat spotted tyres in the process and struggled for pace for the remainder of the race. The Brazilian crossed the line in 23rd place.

Speaking about his race, Daly said, “I had a good start, on the first lap I just tried to make up as many places as possible. I could tell the car was a little loose at the beginning, but I was able to drive hard in the middle of the race but then towards the end I had to think about saving tyres. I wanted to have enough performance left in the tyres to be able to make an attack at the end, which is what I did, but I think we were just one lap short of being able to make a pass for points. It was a great race and a good result following an unfortunate qualifying session. We’ve been fighting for the points for the last two weekends, so next race we have to take some points home!”