L'Equipe wrote:'Reliability must improve' - Voeckler
Another day, another retirement at Voeckler GPE. Dan Greenlaw got the works Renault team's first points on the board for the season with his debut podium finish, but world champion Thomas De Bock notched up another retirement, this time with a transmission failure similar to the one that blighted Greenlaw in Adelaide.
"Our key rivals have made unforced errors, and unreliability on our part has stopped us from capitalising," said team principal Jeremy-Etienne Voeckler. "It's unacceptable. We cannot fight for the championship if that car cannot reach the end of the race. MRT are streaking away at the front, not on raw pace but simply because they have made no mistakes. We are capable of beating them, but reliability must improve greatly to do so."
ARWS rookie Dan Greenlaw turned in another good performance, rocketing from the last row of the grid to finish on the podium at Bathurst, and his team principal was quick to praise the American driver.
"Greenlaw has been the most impressive driver this year, without a doubt," he said. "We let him down, and other drivers let him down in quali. His gearbox was broken and we couldn't send him out in time in Q1, and then cars blocked him continuously during the second session. Without those unfortunate events, I'm sure Dan would have qualified near the front and finished on the top step."
"He was determined and unflappable today. An incisive, measured drive of a champion. He was easily the best driver at Adelaide, and has delivered again in great fashion today at Bathurst. Hawkin is fast but not coping with the pressure well, whereas Dan has been incredibly impressive with his level-headed approach. He has laid down a marker now, and Thomas must now respond to this challenge."
Gazzetta dello Sport wrote:No surprises from Bizzarri & Lucarelli
In the mad scenarios of ARWS, there are often wild and unexpected results forthcoming. Aside from more woe for Jones, and an error-strewn performance from Terry Hawkin, there was surprisingly few talking points after Bathurst, especially from two of the Italian contingent at the race.
There were high hopes for Alessandro Lucarelli, who had placed his new Kjellerup car in 5th place for the race, on the same row as team-mate Nick Nurmester. However, both capitulated their excellent grid slots, tumbling down the order, and ending with Lucarelli down in 10th place, several seconds behind Nurmester in 9th.
"The car has promise, this is very clear," said the Parmigiani pilot, "Our race pace is not good. At first I was afraid it was just me struggling, but it seems also Nick [Nurmester] is having similar problems with consistency."
Marco Bizzarri meanwhile, who oddly enough was piloting the same car Lucarelli had used at Adelaide, despite racing for a rival team in the form of Revolution, had a similarly quiet race. Il Toro was anything but raging, instead quietly dispatching fellow tailend runners to move up from 21st to 14th, just behind team-mate Andrej Kremnicky.
"We had hoped the new car would bring improvement, and while I certainly feel more confident at the wheel with this new car, it hasn't quite bedded in yet," he explained. "We must continue working to acclimatise to this new chassis and exploit its potential. I don't think this track suited our characteristics anyway, but I think we can make forward steps in the coming races."
De Telegraaf wrote:'Technical gains required' - van Nieuwenhuijzen
Gauthier driver Bastiaan van Nieuwenhuijzen had a much more quiet race than his ARWS debut at Adelaide, where instead of fighting for podium places, he was forced to make do with finishing just outside the points, ceding 6th place late in the race to Terry Hawkin.
"We have potential, this is certain," he said. "The baseline is good. But we are missing a little bit of optimisation. It also doesn't help that the Fusions and Voecklers have more grunt than us from their engines."
"When Terry Hawkin caught me near the end, there was nothing I could do," he continued. "His car is too fast. Probably the fastest on the grid. I'm disappointed in general not to be in the points, but all the cars ahead of us today were there on merit. It would have taken higher attrition to score points today."
The Dutchman was still positive however, citing car improvements coming before the next round at Monza.
"We are doing a big test in a couple of weeks in France," he explained. "The team is working tirelessly on improving the car, and also I will get a bit of time dedicated to working on my wheelwork, which is nice of the team. The hope is these improvements will get us back into the mix for podiums again."
