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23/05/15 Alexander Rossi adds more points to his score today at Monaco.
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After Alexander’s excellent second place in yesterday’s Feature Race the young American was starting from 7th on the reversed grid for today’s 30 lap Sprint Race wile Jordan was just two places behind him in 9th. The weather was cooler than Friday with air and track temperatures of 17° and 23° respectively and there were dark clouds overhead with a chance of rain. All the cars were starting on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow soft compound tyres.
The cars all got away cleanly with Alexander holding onto 7th place despite contact with Pic into Ste Devote that saw some damage to his nosecone and front wing. Several incidents on the opening lap saw the Virtual safety Car employed but racing was quickly underway again and by lap five the Racing Engineering car was involved in a big battle for 4th with just two seconds between Leal in 4th and Alexander in 7th. Lap fifteen, the halfway point, saw Alexander still in 7th, three seconds behind Pic and just over three seconds ahead of Vandoorne but all the cars were now getting spread out and there were few overtaking manoeuvres. Alexander and Vandoorne deliberately fell back a little from the cars in front and both men began to set some very fast laps in an effort to gain the points for setting the fastest lap of the race.
In the dying laps of the race Alexander closed in on Pic but there was not enough time left to attempt a pass and the Racing Engineering car, with its damaged nose, finished the race in 7th.
Jordan found himself involved in the usual Monaco opening lap traffic jam and he dropped three places to finish the opening lap in 12th with some damage to his nose but he gained a place following the restart after the end of the Virtual safety Car period to lie 11th. Jordan closed in on Gasly and on lap nine the gap was just 0.3 seconds but Lynn was just 0.5 seconds behind so the young Briton could not afford any mistakes. As the race entered the closing laps the Racing Engineering driver continued to apply pressure to Gasly and as they left the tunnel Jordan dived to the outside as the cars approached the chicane but Gasly moved over and Jordan had nowhere to go and his car was launched into the air over the rear wheel of the DAMS car and he was forced into immediate retirement.
A mixed weekend for Racing Engineering with yesterday’s second place for Alexander the highlight and once again the American has shown himself to be very quick in both qualifying and racing conditions and, although he didn’t get the results he hoped for, Jordan was very quick in difficult conditions on his first visit to the Monte Carlo circuit. The next round of the 2015 GP2 Series will be in four weeks’ time at Spielberg in Austria. |
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Team Comments:
Thomas Lassus, Race Engineer: “A good weekend overall for points with less scored today than yesterday as, due to the reversed grid, if you finish well in the first race it is always difficult at Monaco to improve on your grid position and Jordan had quite a big accident stopping him from scoring more points. We hope he will recover soon from the big impact when the car landed. Alex’s race was affected after the start as he had a good getaway but he made contact with Pic under braking for the first corner damaging his front wing, we tried several times after that to set the fastest lap but missed it by 0.002 seconds, the pace was there and the car would have been faster without the wing damage. We are scoring good points every weekend and we need to continue doing this and get a win so that we can put pressure on Vandoorne.”
Alexander Rossi:: “The start was good except that I got a bit caught up with the traffic jam on the inside, which broke my front wing. But despite that the pace was good and we brought home 2 more points. I’m looking forward to fighting back in Austria.” |
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