Tough weekend in Valencia

28 June 2010

Carlin's GP3 team endured a tough weekend in round three of the inaugural GP3 Series this weekend, following two disappointing races around the Valencia street circuit. A tough qualifying session, which was red flagged with four minutes remaining meant the Carlin drivers were unable to follow up on their quick pace in testing. From then on the Carlin drivers suffered from a number of incidents and left Spain empty-handed.

The weekend got off to a good start for Carlin drivers Dean Smith and Josef Newgarden who finished Friday practice third and seventh quickest respectively. The team had high hopes ahead of qualifying on Saturday morning, but struggled to get the optimum performance from their tyres on the smooth track. In the final stages of the 30 minute session, the Carlin drivers started to find time, with Smith putting in his two best sectors when a red flag halted the session with four minutes remaining on the clock. With no time left to better their position, Newgarden was 17th, while Smith and Lucas Foresti were both handed five place grid penalties for yellow flag infringements and lined up 24th and 30th.

Race one reached an early conclusion for Newgarden who was knocked out of the race by Alexander Rossi who was trying to avoid another incident. Smith managed to claw his way up to 17th despite limited overtaking places, just ahead of Foresti who suffered a spin in the final stages.

With only one qualifying session per weekend, the grid for race two was set by the finishing order of race one, giving the Carlin drivers plenty to do ahead of the final race of the weekend. Once again, it was a tough race with Foresti pitting for a new front wing after sustaining damage in the opening laps and Smith dropping from 12th place after his ECU cut out over the start/finish line. The British racer was left stranded for 45 seconds before his car powered back into life again, leaving him at the back of the field. That left Newgarden, who spun in the closing stages of the race and dropped behind team mate Smith.

Reflecting on the weekend, Trevor Carlin said, "This weekend was definitely character building, for the team and the drivers. It's particularly frustrating as we clearly had good pace in practice, but once you have a bad qualifying session, it's very hard to recover in a race schedule like this. We need to take this experience and learn from it, and work out to best translate our pace in testing to a strong performance in qualifying. We know we have a good car and drivers and we'll be back at the front for our home race at Silverstone."