RACE 1
17 Cars lined up for the AFR round 7 and it started on time Sunday morning . Sandy Stuvik, taking full advantage of his pole position and a good start, lead the pack into turn one. Martin Cao, who started from seventh position, was pushing too hard and took an excursion into the grass area after the high speed turn 14. He managed to keep the car until control trying to come back onto the track but he was pushing Luca Ferigutti almost all the way to the opposite wall in the process. Both Luca and his team mate, Suriya went off the track after this close encounter. Martin was penalized with a cash fine after the race but the general feeling everywhere is that the fine was too light.
Chi Cong Li from ART, started from the third position, was showing good speed immediately and took over Samin's second place after one lap. Samin was pushing hard and lowered her lap times down to the 1.40 level but she went off on lap five and relegated herself to position ninth but eventually claimed back to sixth at the end of the race.
Sandy Stuvik drove a beautiful race with very consistent lap times of 1.40 level and increased his pace towards the end of the race with 1.39 lap times. RACE2
Warm up lap started and we saw Chi Cong Li stalled and the marshals rushed over and pushed start his car. It was unfortunate that the race 1 second place finisher had to start from the back after this incident. Samin had slight mechanical issues and she had to start from the pit lane.
When the red light went off for race 2, all cars entered turn 1 safely and Sandy managed to maintain his lead position even after spinning his wheels at the starting line. Luca Ferigutti went off at turn 14 at the end of lap 2, lost control and crossed the track pointing his car towards the opposite wall. Rainey He who was following Luca was caught and hit Luca's car. His car flipped two times in the air. When the dust settled, it was happy to see Rainey got out of the car by himself. The rescue team did a marvelous job arriving the scene immediately and started the proper procedure to take Luca out from his car. The ambulance took Luca to the medical center and everyone was so happy to hear that he only suffered bruises to his shoulder.
The AFR cars were lined up in front of the starting line when the rescue team was working on the two demolished cars. After the track was clean, the pack followed the safety car for a rolling start. On lap five, it was reported that Sandy had a slight ECU issue and his car slowed down. Both Martin and Tin took the opportunity and overtook Sandy. In the same lap, Diana was hit on the back causing a yellow flag and both retired from the race. Chi Cong Li, after his mishap at the start, was pushing hard and eventually finished the race in third position ahead of Sandy. But all the hard work was for nothing after his was penalized 60 seconds for passing under yellow.
Due to the accident in lap two, the race was cut shot and could managed to finish only 7 laps. Martin Cao stood on the top of the podium for winning race 2, Tin Sritrai from ART took 2 nd , Sandy Stuvik took 3 rd and maintains his championship lead of 27 points.
This is the first time in the AFR history that four lady drivers participated. Samin Gomez Briceno of Top Speed Racing took the glory of the best female driver. Alexandra Asmasoebrata from Champ Motorsport and ART's Ran Zhang ranked 2 nd and 3 rd of the Female Class respectively. |