Tenth place and a single point definitely wasn’t what the DS Virgin driver had been hoping for after he topped the timings during the first free practice session but, when an accident in qualifying placed him at the very back of the grid, getting anywhere near the points was going to be a challenge.
Helped by misfortune of those ahead, Lopez began his climb up through the field, and was running in fourteenth by the time he left the pits in the midrace car swap. There was still work to do, including a three way fight with Antonio Felix da Costa and Stephane Sarrazin which saw the trio run side by side through a few corners, but the Argentinian took tenth place from Jaguar’s Mitch Evans on the penultimate lap of the race, much to the delight of the fans.
“I think there are more positives than negatives to take from this,” Lopez said after the race. “Nobody wants to make a mistake and go off in qualifying because sometimes it puts the weekend in the bin. You start at the back, but in the end it was a positive, especially with the pace we showed. The final result doesn’t show what we could have done here.”
Lopez added that the team still hasn’t figured out what caused the crash in qualifying.
“We checked the data and there is nothing really strange.”
Most of teammate Sam Bird’s bad luck happened during the race. After an early full course yellow, the Brit sustained damage on the restart that forced him to pit early. By this point, it was race over for Bird, but the fastest lap was still up for grabs, so he headed back onto the track in the second car.
Bird held the fastest lap for the majority of the race, before being beaten by Felix Rosenqvist late in the day. The Brit continued to push in the dying laps of the race, a little too hard at times, as he collided with the wall just as the chequered flag dropped.
DS Virgin may know it has a car capable of topping the times and setting fastest laps, but they still take only a single point from Buenos Aires, and hope Mexico in April holds better luck.
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