SUPERLEAGUE FORMULA - 23.10.2008
Race Report Estoril, 18-19 October

FREE PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING

Not too much to mention from free practice. Free practice gave teams an oppurtiuntiy to get to grips with the circuit and to fine tune the set up of the car.

In the group qualifying phase it turned out neither car was quick enough to push through to the semi-finals. Craig missed the cut by 0.15 sec., maybe if he could have done another lap which due to an unlucky set of circumstances he couldn't, he would have qualified for the semis.
But anyway, in this series starting from P9 you know anything can still happen. Tuka was rather more unhappy with P15.

RACE 1

The start was given in front of some 25.000 crowd -mostly supporters from FC Porto which is 200km. away from Lisbon- and under a sunny sky .
Craig made another good start, moving up to P7 by the end of the first lap. By the end of the pit stops we were still running P7. The car was rather nervous at the back and at about half distance Craig pushed maybe a little too hard which cause him to make a few mistakes which lost us a couple of places. Towards the end of the race a problem with the engine developed which eventually caused another retirement and a lot of valuable points lost.

Tuka had a rather anonymous race, eventually finishing in P9.

Immediately after the race it was decided by MTC (the engine builders) that an engine change was needed. The team had 1.45 hours to do it and against all odds managed to do so. A truly fantastic performance by the mechanics. With less than one minute to go before the closing of the pitlane the engine was fired up.

RACE 2

Craig was in P4 thanks to the retirement in Race 1. Tuka was in P7 as FC Porto didn't make it to the start of Race 2.
Unfortunately there hadn't been time to bleed the cluthch which caused Craig to stall the enigne at the start of the formation lap. As a result he had to start the race at the back of the field.

Tuka had a reasonalble start and was running in P7 in the early stages of the race. Craig had another storming couple of laps and was already in P8 when all of a sudden he fell back to P11 after a mistake had caused him to spin the car.
After the pitstops Craig was still p11, Tuka had fallen back to P13. With a couple of retirements ahead of us both cars moved up two places.

Not a brilliant result and again for the Anderlecht-car a much better result obviously was possible. All we can do is hope that we've had our share of bad luck now as Craig and the car are clearly quick enough . The Anderlecht-car has fallen back to P7 in the standings but P3 is still a realistic target.

With Tuka and the Flamnego-car we need to find some speed but we know that in this championship anything is possible and we can still realistically hope for another podium finish in the remaining 2 races.

We are now looking forward to the next round at Vallelunga, Italy on 1-2 November.