F1RWRS 2014 - ROUND 15 - CHINESE GP - Shanghai Pudong
Weather report: DRY ALL WEEKEND
PRE-QUALIFYING (in
bold qualified drivers)
1.Phoenix McAllister (Phoenix) -- 57.707
2.Du Lei (Prospec) -- 57.898 (+0.191)3.David Koczo (Trueba Alitalia) -- 58.328 (+0.621)
4.Poppy Whitechapel (GRM) -- 58.334 (+0.627)
5.Frank Zimmer (GRM) -- 58.405 (+0.698)
6.The Stig (Phoenix) -- 58.478 (+0.771)7.Steven Mackintosh (Mecha) -- 58.551 (+0.844)
8.Jean Luc Schiller (Prospec) -- 58.559 (+0.852)9.David Neuberg (Mitie) -- 58.943 (+1.236)
10.Francois Albertini (Shonan) -- 59.257 (+1.550)
11.Darren Older Jr (Trueba Alitalia) -- 59.369 (+1.662)
12.Gio Van Dycke (Shonan) -- 59.369 (+1.695)
13.Ashley Watkinson (Mitie) -- 59.444 (+1.737)
14.Tomislaw Tajner (Dofasco) -- 59.448 (+1.741)
15.James Davies (Mecha) -- 59.473 (+1.766)
16.Sebastian Groves (Dofasco) -- 59.560 (+1.853)
17.Leonhard Von Gottorp (Tropico) -- 1.00.677 (+2.970)
18.Miko Fakkinen (Tropico) -- 1.01.453 (+3.746)
QUALIFYING
RACE
Daniel Melrose made clear from the beggining of this season that his team had produced the fastest car, but when your drivers are bound for double retirements almost every weekend, there´s little fun on the experience of being 2 seconds ahead of your rivals in qualifying, only to watch the end of the race from the pit wall as your pit neighbours celebrate for wins. And that´s what happened this year. DGN overcame their reliability problems where MRT didn´t and the championship was decided there, and what we saw during the Chinese GP was no exception: Davies pulled an amazing peformance and, when he retired, Dagnall was there to pick up the win thanks to a better strategy than that of Nicolas (who simply had to copy Dagnall on strategy to stay ahead, as the DGN hardly had the top speed to pass the MRT on track); to add insult to injury, the french retired too and the championship battle came to a sudden end when it had got really interesting. Dagnall simply had to drive fast enough to be there to win this championship, and that´s exactly what he did.
Now, turning our attention to the rest of points scorers, it was a race of contrasts. Aurielian Moll seemed to not have pace for nothing else than a few points in the beggining, but got stronger during the course of the race and in the end picked up the pieces left to score a fantastic 2nd. Shinobu Katayama had to overcome yet another electric failure, but drove like possesed from then on for the podium. Pippa Mann never looked like fighting for anything but the correct strategy got her a serious 4th place, the contrary as Kay Lon, who always looked for a better result but the wrong pit decissions put him behind. The last point was for Sammy Jones, who drove quite a grey race, with his passing to Melrose for the last points as the only remarkable thing about his weekend.
It was also a race we saw the desperation of Fredo Mestolio smashing his helmet to pieces after yet another failure of the ARC prevented him from scoring a podium finish: He was running a solid 2nd when he retired. It was also a good race for GP debutant Du Lei: She managed to qualify the Prospec where Schiller didn´t and managed to trouble Phoenix McAllister until the car stopped a few laps from the end.
On the other side, and appart from MRT, it was quite a bad weekend for Douglas Mann, while more technical problems kept the Kamahas out of the race when they could have scored a couple of points, but that was nothing compared to what HRT had to suffer: After a good qualifying, Jason Hamilton was a bit too slow in detecting De Bock´s smoking Gillet, and crashed on his own in a straight line. Not only that, but the other driving mistake during the race came from Dean O'Lauchlan, who spun a few laps to the end, finishing a distant 8th, enough for the HRT team to pick up the ROTR award.
Now the championship is over we might see a festive Japanese GP, with new faces on the grid, line-up announcements for 2015, and (we hope), lots of on track action.
Fastest lap chart:
PICTURES
Grid
Fleet retiring
Davies on his way out
...and Nicolas too
after passing Mestolio masterfully
O'Lauchlan spinning
Dagnall on his way to the title
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
Drivers
1. Mark Dagnall - 62 pts
2. Phillippe Nicolas - 46 pts
3. Shinobu Katayama - 38 pts
4. Aurelien Moll - 27 pts
5. Nicolas Steele - 26 pts
6. Thomas de Bock - 24 pts
7. Daniel Melrose - 23 pts
8. Sammy Jones - 22 pts
9. Nathanael Spencer - 20 pts
10. Douglas Mann - 15 pts
11. Barii Mori - 13 pts
12. Kay Lon - 12 pts
13. Ron Mignolet - 11 pts
14. Ben Fleet - 10 pts
15. Mirko Bosevic - 9 pts
=. Pippa Mann - 9 pts
17. Frank Zimmer - 8 pts
18. Rhys Davies - 4 pts
19. The Stig - 3 pts
=. Daniel Martins - 3 pts
21. Ashley Watkinson - 2 pts
22. Jesus Plaza - 1 pt
=. Jean-Luc Schiller - 1 pt
CONSTRUCTORS
1. DGNgineering - 72 pts
2. MRT - 66 pts
3. Gillet - 51 pts
4. Sunshine - 50 pts
5. Jones - 45 pts
6. Kamaha - 39 pts
7. Foxdale - 24 pts
8. Arrowtech - 12 pts
9. Acuri - 11 pts
10. GRM - 8 pts
11. HRT - 6 pts
12. Phoenix - 3 pts
13. ARC - 1 pt
=. Prospec - 1 pt
Tread lightly in ARWS. Every decision might be your last.
.
And there I was thinking you hired me for my qualifying pace to try and help you get out of pre-qualifying! Do you want to get rid of me? Well tough. We have a contract and you won't find ME trying to get out of it any time soon!