After the complicated debut, last week at the Formula SimRacing World Championship, GhostSpeed Racing Team got back to track, at Sakhir for the second round of the year. The bad start at Sepang left the team also determined to bounce back, even thought no illusion where created, as the same tough field was still there. For the Bahrain race, GhostSpeed proceeded to a rearrangement on his line up, as Luis Azinheira had to withdraw from the WC due to personal commitments, incompatible with the race hour.
The young driver from Porto had another hard, but well thought qualification, by getting the 18th place on the grid. He would eventually climb up to the Top 10, before being forced to withdraw from race. On the other side of the team pit, Stephane was getting himself within the team, and the World Championship ambience. He would not be let down by the pressure, and put the 7th best time on the grid. A great start for the Dutch driver. The race would be even better, with both drivers finding themselves trough the pack, with less or more difficulties. Both managed to achieve their goals.
João Barbosa, who still trying to find the best conditions to explore is true potential, thought all along the race with the mid grid racers, and after some errors, and after most of the race had gone by, he was in the Top 10, tough it wouldn’t last much. With to laps to go, the Portuguese driver had another connection timeout, leaving him with no better than the 12th overall position. Although some problem affected him too, Roualt had better luck.
Stephane left no one with doubts of his talent, after fighting all along the race in the top 8, with the best in the grid. He could even thought for the podium at the end, but some errors, car reliability issues and a different strategy, left him, in a no worse 5th position. A brilliant start for him, who also gave GhostSpeed, the first taste of points at the World Championship, a week latter after the Team debut.
Stephane Roualt (NED), Race comments:
"I really had a great race. At the start I was being really careful, because I had a lot of lag, and didn’t want to crash, or crash into someone. So I maintained 7th position. Carefully driving behind David. I went passed him on the straight, as he seemed to have some problems, probably with lag also. Patrick passed me into T1, he came from really far, but I saw him, and backed off naturally, because I didn’t want to crash. Few laps later I got passed him again, and started to pull away, and going towards Danny. I knew we were on the same strategy, both stopped in 15th lap. After the pit stop, the gap was less than a second. At one moment I came to close to him, and needed to go off track to avoid hitting him, Darius passed me at that point. I started to gain on Danny again, and passed him eventually. After second pit stop, I got stuck for a few laps behind Joakim, I knew he was on a 2 stop, so he was slower than in laptime, I also passed him with a good fight. Before my last pit stop, David passed me after I made a mistake, and after that I decided to safe my brakes, and just bring the car home. I did bad laptimes last stint, because of it. Maybe in the end not such a good idea, because Spengler was really slow in the end, if I pushed more in my last stint, maybe I could’ve had him. But I chose to bring my car home instead of that. I'm really happy with this result in my debut race. And thanks to Roald and GS owners, Pedro and Dethan for giving me this opportunity to make my debut here at Bahrain. Finally, congratulations to Ondrej, Darius and David for their podium, great drive!!"
João Barbosa (POR), Race comments:
"Well, it will be difficult to me to speak about this race but I will try. Today i was running in my girlfriend house because of my connection problems but the end will be the same, was I had a connection lost 2 laps to the end of the race, can’t believe. In Qualify I didn’t have too much hope because i focus my attention on race setup, i could fight for 14 or 15 place but that was ok.
In race I had terrible problems with pc my game goes really slow and I was running 2 or more seconds slower than my pace. I had a good start and follow Fabrizio, and he pass some cars crashed and going into the gravel, we gain a lot of positions there. In the first or second lap I had a touch with Sergio when he was trying to pass me and my front suspension got damage. Then in the next laps i made a mistake and lost some positions. After that I run solo running with a really poor pace but I couldn’t do better because of the computer. Then 2 laps to the end of the race when I was 11 position I got a connection lost. So frustrating…. I have no words. Anyway I’m happy because this is a historical day for GhostSpeed Team has we took the first points in the FSR Championship, and we need to thanks Stephane Roualt by his excellent performance and Roaldo Racing for letting him race for us. Thanks Guys. Lets hope the problems in connection and computers dies here."
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