A1GP: Team Netherlands Ended The Third A1GP Season In Seventh
May 04, 2008
A1 Team Netherlands has ended the third A1GP season in seventh. In the final races of the season the team finished ninth in the Sprint race and sixth in the Feature race. With that result the points total of the team this season comes to 87 points.
In the Sprintrace A1 Team Netherlands started from 11th on the grid. Jeroen Bleekemolen had a good start and immediately managed to climb to ninth. Moving further up the field did not prove to be possible and A1 Team Netherlands finished in that position. It got the team two points.
In the final A1GP race of the season A1 Team Netherlands has finished in sixth. From a tenth grid position Jeroen Bleekemolen had a good start, just like in the Sprint race and immediately managed to move up one place at the expense of USA. A little later the safety car came out after a collision between Australia and Pakistan, with both retiring. At the restart Bleekemolen made a great move at South Africa, heading into Druids he was already next to him on the outside and moments later he was past. After the first pitstop sequence South Africa made a short comeback, but they dropped back soon after. A1 Team Netherlands was running eighth for a while and climbed to seventh when Ireland damaged its front wing on India’s car and dropped far back. When Germany retired as well Bleekemolen was running sixth comfortably.
Jeroen Bleekemolen;
“In the first race I had a good start, from 11 to 9. There wasn’t much more I could do. The car was a bit hard to drive and everyone was going at about the same pace. It was a bit of a procession, that was clear. After the start we were ninth, so we finished ninth. In the second race I had another good start. I had a nice fight with Zaug, who I managed to overtake. The pitstops were average, after the first one we gained a position, with the second one we did not gain or loose anything. During the rest of the race there was little more I could do. We were just as fast as the people surrounding us. When you look at Neel Jani for instance, we were not far behind him as far as times were concerned. That remained the same during the race. There were two or three countries clearly faster, apart from that we were reasonably competitive. Just not good enough to finish on the podium. Of course we would have wanted to finish the season with a better final result. Seventh is not what we set out for at the start. A number of teams were already strong at the start of the season and some teams started cooperating and became much stronger during the year. This made us drop further back slowly. That is one of the most important things for us, finding the right partner, with a good driver. A good country or start running another country as well. When you have two or three cars and start to cooperate closely you can really make steps and then you are competitive. We are not far off and the field is close together. When you can find some things through a partnership you can go for the podiums.”
Jan Lammers;
“After qualifying I was in a pretty foul mood. But when you look at the Sprint race and you see that we are right behind New Zealand who are high up in the Championship. You also are in front of France and Germany. Then I realized that this Championship is terribly close. You also see how close the racing is up front, for instance between Great Britain and India. I think that the Championship has improved very much as far as drivers are concerned. There are at least 20 absolute world class drivers competing here. That is very good for the Series. Jeroen just did a good job during the race. The times he set at the end were about the same as the front runners. We are still losing it in qualifying and the free practice sessions. So be it. This was the season. We were not able to do better than this. We will have to learn from this and take the necessary measures for next year to be a team that can win races regularly.”
