Season Zero of the inaugural E1 e-sports series continues this week with the third round of the championship taking place at the Dubai Autodrome.
GT Radial Eurasia Motorsport regroup after a difficult outing in China, aiming to rekindle their impressive form displayed at the previous round in Malaysia. With a still healthy points tally of 61, the team and drivers Inigo Anton and Joaquin Garrido will be aiming high and looking to move up from the current fifth position in the championship standings.
The team now look forward to Thursday’s Dubai double-header which gets underway at 22.00 local time, 14.00 GMT.
Q&A with Tan Lip Han, Eurasia Motorsport’s Data Engineer
The last race was a tricky one for the driver pairing with both suffering damage and subsequent issues?
“Yes, it was one to forget unfortunately. Last race was a testament of how harsh motorsport can be, basically anything that can go wrong did go wrong for us. Our pace was not bad as we can see from the practice and qualifying, sadly during the race lady luck just wasn’t on our side and prevented us delivering. However, this is also a good opportunity now to now see what our drivers are really made of, will they succumb to disappointments, or will they bounce back stronger?
The Dubai layout is quite different from the Shanghai circuit, but still features some long straights. What is the best way to achieve lap time while also remaining quick enough on the straights to make passes in DRS?
“Dubai Autodrome is a traditional track with the classic layout of corners vs straights dilemma that comes with it. It is fairly different from Shanghai, but some of the key setup points from Shanghai and also Sepang are transferrable to here.
“The key here is not to over-slow the car before the high speed sweepers, as any speed deficiencies on entry will be carried forward to the following corners and there will be no way to recover that time loss. The drivers need to be courageous and confident in that they can carry high amount of speed that these X-17 race cars thrive in.”
We’re fifth in the standings heading into this race and obviously looking for gains. Testing this week will be crucial ahead of Thursday’s race, what varying things can your try and analyse this week?
“The same test programmes as per the last two races still apply. We always aim to try as many things as possible to improve our performance index, but even so both drivers are also actively racing in sim and in real life, so I am trying to streamline the testing program even more, and possibly do one or two less days of running so as to not burn out the drivers.
“Both have been very professional for their young age, showing a high degree of commitment, and these commitments will pay off inevitably. Even though we did not get the race results we deserved in China, the drivers still walk out of that race weekend with more knowledge in car behaviour, the setup characteristics, and driving even better. Testing is key and these drivers know it; I have no doubt the car and the drivers will be on pace again this week.”
