David O'Reilly
A bad quali means I can go forwards in the race.
World Championship Round 1 Melbourne
Headlines
Headlines
The first round of the Formula Sim Racing World Championship was held at Albert Park Melbourne on Sunday over a full championship distance of 58 laps.
Newly promoted and guest drivers from the feeder formulae take it to the established 2014 World Championships drivers.
Cinderella story as Daniel Kiss takes a guest drive in World Championship and stuns the grid with the win.
Tight Podium Battle in final laps. Enthralling battle after Brzezinski undercut in final stops.
Thrilling finish as Brljak attacks the gap to Brzezinski and the two are separated by .328 sec.
Albert Park Walls claim several victims.
Podium
Winner- Daniel Kiss-Hungary. Madcape Racing Team (Guest).
Second-Kuba Brzezinski -Poland. Origin Front Row Racing.
Third- Petar Brljak-Croatia. Twister 2Fast4You
The Race
The early laps saw a small lead group of four drivers develop that incredibly were entirely new or non World Championship drivers. Daniel Kiss the winning Ace Driver from Saturday doing one of three allowed “step up drives”*, Kuba Brzezinski newly promoted from Pro in 2014, Jeroen Kweekel the Pro Winner from earlier in the afternoon, likewise “stepping up” and then newly promoted 2014 Ace driver Jonny Simon.
Sadly an incident involving Jeroen Kweekel took out Jonny Simon the battle was effectively left between Kiss and Brzezinski as they built a small gap to the drivers behind.
It was a tight fight for the win as Kiss and Brzezinski traded blows, virtually mirroring each other pit stop for pit stop as they both implemented a 4 stop strategy. The two were seldom separated by more than 4 seconds. Who would switch to the Prime tyre first? It was a case of who would blink first and go for the undercut on a final set of options (thus committing themselves to a slower final stint on Primes) and who would build the foundations for a fast final stint by taking their medicine earlier with prime tyres.
Left with no other way to dent the Kiss pace Brzezinski went for it, Options in stint 4. He attacked and pulled the gap down to 2 sec, took his primes and went hard. Kiss was in front but the gap was dropping as Kiss had to run his worn primes as he awaited the pit window for an options final stint. It was down to 15 seconds. Is it possible? Kiss pits and rejoins behind Brzezinski! The crowd were on their feet, we had a battle royal. Can the Polish speedster hold off Kiss who was now on options.
The answer was no, Kiss got the options working and was threatening even at the end of his out-lap. Skillful defence from Brzezinski held him up briefly but in a classy and respectful showing from both drivers the pass was dealt with into turn one without contact.
The win seemed to be in the bag for Kiss, but the race was not over. Brzezinski now had to defend again from Peter Brljak attacking on fresh options. He managed to hold him off and the gap .328 secs after 58 laps. All the more impressive as Brljak was P10 on the grid!
Muhammed Patel-(England) took 4th with a consistent drive from a solid qualifying.
David Greco improved from 11th on the grid to take 5th place.
Enrico Di Loreto (ITA) had a thrilling battle with Saxen as Di Loreto climbed fro 14th on grid to 6th.
Meanwhile John-Eric Saxén (FIN) in the best improvement of position on the day climbed from 19th to 7th.
In what is becoming a recent trademark for Blair Disley he made a measured attack and some elegant overtakes to impress with a climb from 15th on the grid to 8th.
Rounding out the top 10 were Eros Masciulli (ITA) 9th
Patrick De Wit (NED) 10th.
*The series rules allow drivers to “step up” for a maximum of 3 rounds above their main series. The rules also mandate that the top 3 drivers from a category must move up the the next higher category for the following year.
Kiss must be asking himself why he doesn't drive World Championships full time?
Kweekel who drives in Pro and had the pace for World Championships might be asking himself a similar question? Or at least what he is doing in Pro?
After the race Brzezinski was heard to say that Jonny Simon was under rated as a driver and his pace prior to his DNF had impressed.
The teams will be scrabbling to to try to unlock the secrets of twisters set ups. See you in One week for Round 2-Sepang.
Full Results and standings available here.
Youtube Live stream Here
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