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Andreas is hoping for points at Monza even if he has only scored two points at Monza in six previous starts here. Andreas qualified ninth before a race one start which was delayed by thirty minutes because of the heavy afternoon storm rains. Suffering from an engine misfire, nevertheless, Andreas's race was helped by a tremendous early stop strategy from the team that allowed him to bring his car to a good finish in 12th position. The cars ran for five laps behind the safety car before it came in for the real start of the race, although visibility was still very poor. "I arrived at Monza motivated to make up for last week's race in Spa and hoping for a better outcome than in Belgium. I am pleased to have finished this race in 12th position. My engine was completely soaked with water at the start and nothing responded until the six or seventh lap before the end when it dried out!" said Zuber. He added, "When I arrived at Monza I could not find my helmet nor my visors as a number of our personal items had been stolen from the truck when it was impounded.
Luckily Bell was able to send a helmet right away and it remained black and unpainted which I felt sorry for my sponsors. I clocked a 12th fastest time in the first free practice session. I had a good pace and stayed out of trouble for a good start ahead of this afternoon's qualifying session. The weather was nice with a very sunny afternoon for qualifying. I was one the fastest drivers on the track. I wanted of course to fight for a higher position. With the team we worked on the set up of the car again for the last minutes in the session but I had a lot of traffic after my second set of tyres and could not improve my position after my stop. I finished the qualifying in ninth position with a lap of 1.30.803. This is a good position for points in the race if all goes well at the start. But the very heavy rain compromised the start of course. Not only was my engine completely soaked with water, the electronics suffered heavily as the race start was delayed 30 minutes and we remained behind the safety car for six laps. When the race started on the track behind the safety car, it was still no visibility and very wet. The conditions were difficult for the eight first laps then the track half-dried. My engine was suffering from a misfire and. My team did a super job in terms of strategy. I had an early pit stop on lap 7 and rejoined in 19th position. The team strategy was absolutely perfect. Ahead of me a number of cars were off or missed the chicanes:
Petrov, Kobayashi, Chandhok,Teixeira, Nunes, Valsecchi, Villa, Rodrigues,Ceccotto, Herck, Parente, Mortara and Huelkenberg but at one point I also was forced to do so.
At mid-race, it was still incredibly difficult to maintain the car on the track and impossible to progress nor take over. Only towards the end of the race the car felt better. But it was a bit too late. Between penalties and accidents, I finished 12th.
I have to wait now as I needed to score 6 more points to reach 100 in my career and that is my goal at the minimum this weekend." |
