MASTER-1 REVIEW: Ganesh Somasundaram
Only 5 out of the 40 managers are on Yokomama. So was that a wise choice??? It doesn’t seem so as the leader of Master-1 is closely followed by 2nd placed Keri, managing 40 points from 5 races. Stats show that 116 managers are on Badyear and only 22 on Yokomama . Will race 6 also be productive for Andrei?? Will all the managers be able to cope up with him?? Can Paulo and Pinto close the gap on Keri and Andrei? Only time will tell…
Qualifying
Marek took pole position, only just. He was only 0.465s ahead of Keri. Paulo completed the front row. Vladimir took an astonishing 4th place. Can he have a good race?? Andrei qualified 5th with only 0.955s behind pole. Mike took the 6th place and Alex took 7th place for “Blue Supernova”. Flavio, Hakan and David took the last 3 places with a total lap time of 2:13.530s. 6th placed Jimmy started a disappointing 23rd place. Trying to get into the top 4, Pablo qualified 20th and Martin started in a poor 14th place. One contrasting fact was that, managers who did their first qualification well didn’t do their 2nd well. Will they move up the grid once the race starts???
Race
The race started amid great expectations. There was no position change in the top 5 and Stephen made a bad start, losing 4 places and moving down to 30th. Leone made a really bad start and lost 4 places. Too heavy fuel?? This enabled Alex, Pires and Peev to leapfrog him. Newbie Sandra(133 races only) lost 2 places at the start and fell to 32nd spot, 11.719s behind the leader. After 3 identical finishes (31st in the last 3 races), Guilio made a great start, gaining 7 places at the start and going to 26th, 9.914s behind Wasilewski. Being in the Martini team, Watson maintained his 22nd position, but 7.343s behind. Coming off a strong 8th place last race, Karlis defended his 13th spot with grit, 4.776s lagging back. Wanting his first points of the season, Novikov made a terrible start, losing 3 places and being 21st. Another Martini member, Gary, who is struggling with relegation was in a no-competition spot, lost 3 places and ended 37th after the 1st lap. Being 1 of the 2 managers on Dunnolop, Gokhale advanced 2 places and was 19th after the 1st lap, 6.232s behind 1st place.
Lap 26 saw 6 managers pit and 17 managers with wobbly tyres. Marek was still in the lead, but Keri was right behind him, 0.230s behind. Danilin was in the 4th place, 9.059s behind Marek. Meanwhile, Peev had made his way up and was placed 5th, 9.498s back. Leone continued his bad form(2 consecutive bad races). He was smoking and was 31st, 1:28.291s +1lap behind Marek.
Lap 52 witnessed 2 managers pitting and 10 managers with wobbly tyres. 3 managers were smoking, Leone, Tatar and Novikov. Marek dominated till then, holding a slender 0.121s lead over Keri Lovell. Danilin held onto his dear 4th place but 13.928s behind 1st place.
Keri Lovell won the race with a comfortable lead over Marek , 10.027s ahead. But if Marek had been a little faster and his pit a little faster, he should have won a race which he dominated for most of the part. Pinto completed the podium. Andrei finished 5th, thereby going to 2nd spot in the table. Rosina finished in an impressive 6th place, which pushed him up to 9th in the table. Tamhane finished 12th, thereby, moving to 25th in the table, 1 spot inside the relegation zone.
Keri set the fastest lap of 1:00.787s in the 78th lap. Marek set the fastest pit time of 15.019s in Lap 30.
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