The first of the two races scheduled for theweekend`s fourth round of the GP2 Asia Series brought Harald Schlegelmilch to 14th place, while Ho Pin Tung was forced to retire due to a gearbox problem.
The two Trident Racing drivers encountered troubled runs since the beginning. Schlegelmilch was slowed down by a crash happened between two cars that were sitting in front of him, and also suffered from a contact that compromised his toe-in setting. At the end of the first lap, race control called for a full-course yellow, with the subsequent use of the safety-car.
On the following laps, all the cars entered the pit-lane, except for one car each for Meritus and BCN. Tung made his pit-stop immediately, shortly followed by team-mate, and clinched 10th place running with great laptimes.
Unfortunately, a smoke trace appeared from the back of his Dallara, announcing an imminent failure that eventually happened. Schlegelmilch had to tame both the rivals and an unbalanced car, managing to come to checkered flag in 14th. He`ll be starting tomorrow`s Race 2 on row 6. Tung will take off from row 10, in 20th. The race will be starting at 11:00 local time (GMT/UTC+3).Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Managing Director"We`re obviously disappointed for having lost the chance to score a top-10 finish with Ho Pin Tung: he was solidly running in 10th when he was forced to retire due to a mechanical issue. We approached the race with the right strategy, as all our rivals did, except for two cars that stayed on-track during the initial full-course yellow. Ho Pin was in front of Schlegelmilch and changed his tires before him. The Latvian driver didn`t lose too much time, and would have ended up in front of Yoshimoto (the other driver that tried a late stop) without a front tire problem that caused a notable vibration and compromised the car`s handling. It`s a shame because we hoped to reverse the misfortunes suffered in Qualifying, where we didn`t have the chance to exploit our full potential. We proved to have a good pace during the race, as Ho Pin Tung fought with Petrov, Chandhok and D`Ambrosio, while Schlegelmilch was able to recover well after being caught in the initial contact happened between Filippi and Bonanomi. The bitter taste is still in our mouths for the points loss, but we really can`t blame ourselves or our drivers, maybe except for the low starting position".
