After some tough Saturday runs, the AVF by Adrián Vallés team was back on-track today at Circuit Paul Ricard for Race 2 of the World Series Renault 3.5 French weekend. The team was almost able to score a top-10 position with Dutch female racer Beitske Visser, while Swissman Zoël Amberg faced some adverse fortunes since qualifying.
Visser showed good form in the timed session even though a red flag in the closing stages prevented her from improving even further. Then after a great start, she took full advantage of a clever pit-strategy to climb up to the 11th position. As the laps went by, she even showed a top-10 pace, but ran out of laps while catching up with the cars she had in front.
Amberg was forced to start from the back – and with some very old tires – due to an off in qualifying. He hang on as well as he could, but lost even more time with a throttle pedal issue. In the end he had to settle for 19th. The AVF squad will line-up from the 17th to the 19th of October at Jerez de la Frontera for the final round of the 2014 season.
Beitske Visser – Q2: P19 – R2: P11
“The start was really good, although in turn 3 there was a little bit of a melee and I had to brake to avoid getting pushed out. We opted for a late strategy and it paid off, so I overtook like seven cars in the pits and came back on-track in 11th. The pace was also really good, an I could even catch up to Buller. With more laps I’m sure I could have got it done. I’m looking forward to Jerez, where I already performed well in the tests. I hope to get a clean start and then build on from that”.
Zoël Amberg – Q2: P22 – R2: P19
“In qualifying I suffered from a contact with the barriers. I entered the corner the same way I did yesterday but this time something happened and I lost it. It wasn’t a big off but it destroyed my tires so I had to start with some very old ones. In addition to that, a piece of the throttle pedal broke apart and kept getting in the way so I couldn’t accelerate or brake properly. I had to come back to the pits in order to take it away. That was pretty much it and at that point it was impossible to recover. After two unlucky races, I can’t wait to be back on-track at Jerez de la Frontera to end this season in the best possible way”.