Time to turn it all around
It’s been a pretty average season so far to say the least, standing 6th in the Class B championship and Yuan Bo and Vuitthikorn leading the championship table in a commanding lead! Though there have been quite a few positives this season, as our qualifying and race pace hasn’t been a disaster by any means. In fact, probably as competitive as we have been lately! Its wise for us to think, that for the time being, the key is to translate some of this pace into results. In my memory, there have been several pinnacle moments that have changed the course of the season from the very beginning!
I remember in the opening round of the season, I incurred a 30 second penalty for making contact with another car though I thought at the time that I was prepared for the car in front to brake and did have brake pressure applied. I did make a bit of contact all things said, so I accepted the penalty! I can respect the new driving standards and I can see the reasoning behind this enforcement. This immediately put our points tally to a disadvantage from the start of the season. And normally, the key to collecting points is to finish which with a 30 second penalty, is as good as not finishing!
Thailand was another 30 second penalty, this time for overtaking under a yellow flag! I couldn’t believe it as after the race, I was a little surprised to get the call to the stewards room. Sometimes, we can go whole seasons not going to the stewards room for offences, though it had been a rather action packed rock and roll season so far. It happened going down into turn three, of the Buriram International Circuit and the corner was rather wide. One of those things! Another 20 points were lost, to the first 20 from Shanghai!
My second race in Thailand saw more action in the form of a fellow driver hitting my car in the area with big impact on the rear corner of my car. It happened on turn 5, lap 4 where I got hit, putting us just about all the way to the bottom of the standings. It was another fight-back situation managing to finish 6th in the end though points were loss once again! This was starting to get pretty tiring and the other driver and I had words after about the situation. I believe before the next race, we will be having a meeting with their team as well to make sure things are cool. Another 10 points were lost to the leaders.
Though not all is bad as this coming weekend, the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia heads to Australia to the Sydney Motorsport Park. There, we will be running alongside the V8 Supercars and the Porsche Carrera Cup Australia. In addition, Carrera Cup Asia and Australia will be doing an INVITATIONAL race where both the series will be started off the grid, side by side in probably the top 5 biggest Porsche races of all time across the globe.
It is undoubtedly going to be a big racing weekend of some of the best one make racing motorsport followers can watch. V8 Supercars has a long and illustrious history that dates back decades with the Falcon vs. Commordore battles of old, and now more recently, with other car manufacturer brands involved in Australia’s biggest motorsport.
The INVITATIONAL race between the two Carrera Cup regions are a great idea, and doing the last INVITATIONAL in Japan was a heck of a lot of fun versus the Japanese! They were fast, but we were pretty quick too! Since it was so much fun in Japan, I am sure it will be fun once again versus the Aussies!
Coming back to the championship hunt, I think our strategy is pretty simple from now till the end of the season. Get stuck into it and try and go faster while making sure we can covert the pace into some points. Finishing races is what we need to do and this will start to lift us up in the table. It’s going to be a long road back but we have just at the halfway mark for the season. So it isn’t over yet! Last season, we chipped away at the old block all season and it worked well for us so this will be the way moving forward once again! After Sydney, there will be the Singapore and Malaysian Grand Prix’s which are circuits that we know well at Team Jebsen, so hopefully we can also get some gains over on those circuits. So fingers crossed! For now though, it’s off to Australia and time to go motor racing.
