Guangdong International Circuit today witnessed the first ever Formula Pilota China event. Chinese driver, David Zhu, qualified his Eurasia Motorsport car 6th in the 15 car field and finished the race fourth overall, first in the Asian Class, after a successful inaugural race for the new Series.
Driver and team had expected to qualify further up the grid but traffic during his ‘tyre window’ laps consigned the Beijing resident to the third row of the grid for the multi-national field, drivers hailing from nine different Countries. After a good start Zhu was “hung out to dry” on the exit of turn one and finished the lap back where he started, sixth place. It is notoriously difficult to pass on the tight Guangdong circuit and the top six circulated at high speed with no place changes until Dustin Sofyan spun and rejoined behind Zhu. Lucas Auer retired with a technical problem.
David was on the top step of the Asian Driver’s podium and will start 4th in Sunday’s race, the grid for race two being made up from the fastest race laps of race one. “The fact that David posted 4th fastest lap in race one demonstrates he is getting very close to the pace in a field that features competitive drivers from Formula Abarth in Europe, in fact Robert Visolu has won a race there this year” reported Eurasia Motorsport’s Mark Goddard. “The Tatuus Formula Abarth car used in Formula Pilota China is a state of the art junior formula car and with a turbo engine its a real challenge for teams and drivers. We hope David will be on two podiums tomorrow, overall and Asian and I see know reason why not”.
