After a demanding weekend with mechanical breakdown during the first qualifying, Jan Heylen makes an amazing 7th place in Long Beach, California at his debut race the opening race of the new Champ Car Season.
Although the free practice went well, the 14th place in qualifying was not a bad result considering the problems in the qualifying and lost of track-time
Jan Heylen: “I hoped at a little closer staring position than 14th, but of course considering the problems that plagued us during qualifying we are always aware that worse was available as well. I also felt like I didn’t get the best out of my last set of new tires, I have to get used to running on the soft compound for qualifying.”
The race: After a spectacular first lap with the obvious crash in the 1st turn Jan got thru with just an unfortunately damaged front wing. Although Heylen did great avoiding the congestion while running around the crashed cars, a piece of debris was run over and caused damage to the front wing. This only became obvious when the green flag was raised and the cars were back up to speed. The loss of down force forced Heylen to Pit the car under the second yellow caution and repairs -although performed flawlessly quick- caused about 40 seconds delay on the pit stop.
After this stop Heylen was 30 seconds behind the pack but did a great job hunting down the cars and staying with it throughout the following rounds.
One more yellow caution due to a spun car put Jan back in the main pack which he also grabbed the opportunity to gain several positions by overtaking 3 cars going in to turn 1, once the light was green again. Cool driving, impeccable teamwork and flawless steering drove the outcome to the obvious fantastic result.
The planning with the 2 pit stops race would have worked great… and… if not for the front wing repair Heylen is confident that even a better position could have been achieved.
7th Place points + extra Point for running in the lead + first placed rookie at the first debut race in sunny Long Beach, California ended a great starter weekend for Jan Heylen!! Congratulations all around for a job well done!!
Heylen’s final comment: “What an amazing feeling it was to be here coming from a country as small as Belgium and to run with the world best in front of more than 250,000 people and to lead my first ever Champ Car race for 4 laps due to a fantastic pit stop strategy and achieve satisfying result in the first race of the season. This has been so far the highlight of my racing career, the people were great, and the team was amazing, I certainly want to thank the team, the sponsors and everyone that believed in me… to make this dream a reality today. ”
