F1RWRS 2015 -- ROUND 14 -- CHINESE GP -- Macau
Weather report:Pre-Q: Heavy Rain
Qualifying: Light Rain
Race: Light Rain
PRE-QUALIFYING
** ALITALIA, HRT AND SIMPSON PASS. ALITALIA WILL SKIP PRE-QUALIFYING AT ROUND 15
QUALIFYING
RACE
It could have been the race where Mark Dagnall, in the dominant MRT,
waltzed away to his third straight drivers’ title. It could have been the
race where Rosco Vantini, the surprise of the season, closed Dagnall down
to take the championship to the wire. Instead though, Rhys Davies put
himself firmly back in the hunt for the title with a stellar performance,
completing an excellent weekend of pole, fastest lap and race victory. It
all leaves the Australian in second place now, but still 11 points behind
Dagnall. The race was set up by mid-distance to be a fascinating battle
between the two drivers, with Davies leading the way and Dagnall trying to
close in having started further back on the grid and stuck behind slower
cars in the early stages. Instead though, an uncharacteristic error from
Mark put him out of the race with his car in the barriers, leaving Davies
all alone on track with no-one close to challenge him.
The other factor in the championship battle, Davies’ Jones Racing teammate
Vantini, had another race to forget. A poor qualifying session saw him far
down the grid, and on the first lap he ran wide into the barriers, becoming
the first retirement and earning himself Reject of the Race too. It was a
race which saw very high attrition, helped by Barri Mori’s crazy accident
further round on the first lap which took out a number of drivers,
including The Stig, Jean-Luc Schiller, and James Davies. Mori was out on
the spot but his Chinese teammate Du Lei put in another impressive drive,
holding her own with much faster cars behind her, including Pippa Mann and
Dagnall, in the early stages. She too retired late on however with
suspension failure.
The Aeroracing team suffered another double retirement, something team boss
Phoenix McAllister won’t be happy about. Pippa Mann had been running very
well early on, and aside from Davies and Dagnall, looked one of the
strongest drivers out there, but an Audi engine failure brought her race to
a premature end. At DGN, life is very different now Mark Dagnall has made
the switch early to MRT, but Nicholas Steele drove a great race to collect
a deserved second place as other drivers around him fell away. His
performance compared to Shioya who failed to finish again will put more
pressure on the Japanese driver and won’t impress team bosses considering
him for a drive for 2016. Steele on the other hand is doing everything he
can to make sure he appears on the grid in Australia next year. Behind
Steele, completing the podium was Daniel Martins, with an excellent result
for the Sunshine team who have been a shadow of their former selves this
year. His third place will give them a boost heading into the final two
races of the year.
With Dagnall failing to finish, the focus of the MRT camp switched to
Phillippe Nicholas in the latter stages of the race, and his drive was one
of damage limitation, having been held up badly for most of the race behind
a series of slower cars, including Danny van Rijkens’ Tropico. Whilst
Phillippe eventually recovered to fourth, ensuring MRT protected their lead
in the constructors’ battle against Jones, van Rijkens provided the
feel-good story of the day when he held on to bring the Tropico home in a
fantastic 6th place, earning the team their first ever championship point.
Having racked up 32 DNPQs in 2014, Tropico have turned things around this
year, and van Rijkens’ result, becoming the first African driver not only
to start an F1RWRS race, but now also the first to score a point, is a
fantastic benefit for the sport and earns him the Drive of the Race award.
Between van Rijkens and Nicholas was Douglas Mann, who collected two points
for Foxdale. Mann was on the end of some harsh criticism during the race as
he held up many of the front runners as they came round to lap him. Some
near-misses and bizarre manoeuvres resulted in many within the paddock
calling for his retirement at the end of the year, with Martin McFry having
comfortably out-performed him, but at the family-run team, his future may
still be secure. McFry however suffered his own embarrassing incident as he
crashed whilst trying to lap van Rijkens.
Behind the points finishers, the only other cars to cross the line at the
end were the two Alitalias, underlining their impressive reliability with
Koczo and Fleet finishing 7th and 8th respectively. The attrition helped
them up the order, but they were there at the end, and that was despite
Fleet losing his front wing on the first lap. This will probably be the
closest they will get to a points finish this year, and with Tropico
scoring with van Rijkens, it leaves Alitalia as the only team who have
qualified for over half of the season’s races without any points. The
remaining teams in the race, Kingfisher, Gillet, ArrowTech and HRT all
suffered double retirements in a race that tested the resolve of drivers
and their cars to the absolute limit. They’ll all be looking for an easier
time at the next race at Fuji.
Results
Pictures here:
http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/Aerond/library/Gp2/F1RWRS2015/14_Macau?
Tread lightly in ARWS. Every decision might be your last.