Juan Carlos Sistos (MEX) finished today´s race on P9, starting from P10. Sten Pentus (EST) unfortunately had to retire his Zele-Racing machine with a broken driveshaft in lap 14. Juan Carlos had a good start and overtook 2 cars on the run to turn1 at the start. He then struggled a bit with the rear tires going off sooner than expected.
Sten had a poor getaway from his gridposition and lost a couple of positions. He quickly picked up the pace to pass Max Snegirev and was closing in on his teammate before stopping for new rear tires in lap 13. When propelling his car out of the pitlane to rejoin the race, the RH driveshaft let go and Sten had to retire his Zele-Racing machine at Turn 5.
Sten Pentus:“ I am still struggling with my starts. After using the paddle-clutch on the steering wheel for 3 years in WSbR 3.5, i still have to get to grips with using the foot pedal again. The car was nicely balanced and i was able to clock some decent laptimes. Also the pitstop was good, but when i rejoined the race i immediately realised that something broke on the drivetrain and i had to stop my car. Now we will be starting from P14 tomorrow, which is a long way from good points. I hope we can do a good race and show our real potential in race 2.“
Juan Carlos Sistos:“ my start was pretty good and i was able to overtake ome cars. Then, for some reason i had problems with traction and braking. After the pitstop my car felt much better and i was able to push again. P9 is not brilliant of course, but we have another chance to improve tomorrow.“
Michael Zele:“ I am obviousely not happy with the result today, but we´ve seen that we can go the pace. Sten had the best inlap by 0,9 sec. before his pitstop and i am sure he would have finished on a good position without the driveshaft giving up. Thats racing i´m afraid. Also Juan Carlos had some good moments during the race today. His start was good and the pace after his pitstop was also good. Unfortunately we lost about 4 sec. in the pitstop when one of the wheelnuts came off the gun. Tomorrow we need to improve and score points with both cars.“
