After all the problems they had back on Friday, the team and driver Salvador Duran came back from the bottom and earned their first points of the season, with which ‘Chava’ remains as the driver who has brought the best results for the team.
A1 Team Mexico added up a total of 8 points with their performance in the sixth round of the season, which was held in the Autodromo Internacional de Algarve, located near the city of Portimão, in Portugal.
Despite starting from a back position on the grid of the Sprint race, Salvador managed to climb up from 16th to finish 9th, with a great performance in which he even briefly leaded the race.
“The problem of the fuel pump was solved for the Sprint race and after having a bad qualifying position we were able to recover many places during the race, from sixteenth to ninth, which was great for us. The car was not perfect, we continued to have problems with the rear and lost grip on the corners”, commented Salvador.
“After the race we found a problem in the back of the underfloor, where the plank is; it was getting loose and we had a lot of drag. We lost speed on the straight. We changed many things there and also used a much softer set up, because the second race is longer and the car has more fuel than in the Sprint race”, added the Mexican driver.
Salvador began the Feature race from 13th on the grid and won three places at the start. By lap 13th he leaded for three laps. Later on, on lap 28, he leaded again for five laps and even when he could not use the Power Boost during the last 20 laps, he managed to stay in the top positions to eventually finish 4th after Ireland was given a 25 second penalty for overtaking while the Safety Car was on the track.
“For the second race the car felt a lot better after all the changes we made. I think our strategy did not help us very much because the tires with which we started the race were almost new, then we put a set of new tires and for the last part of the race we put another one, this time a very used set of tires. By the second half of the race, when we were doing better, a full track yellow flag came out and for a long time so we were not able to use our new tires appropriately. Besides, we still have to improve our settings on new tires”, stated the driver.
On the last part of the race, with very worn tires, Duran lost an average six tenths per lap. “In the end we got a good result, with a little bit of luck and a little bit of everything, but the truth is, with every race we are getting closer to the level that we should have”.
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