Highs and lows for Darryl O’Young in Brazil

Darryl O’Young equalled his best finish of the season for the Special Tuning Racing team at Curitiba, only for a gearbox failure to scupper his chances of repeating a good result from a second row grid slot in race two.

O’Young had qualified in seventh place on the grid, the highest of the independents’ trophy SEAT drivers at a track which seemed to favour the Chevrolets more than usual, with both of the Bamboo Engineering cars also in the top six.

In a relatively quiet race one for O’Young, the Hong Kong driver held on to seventh, keeping the ROAL Motorsport BMW of Tom Coronel at bay, and was due to line-up fourth on the grid for race two, but a gearbox problem saw O’Young forced to start from the pit-lane. Unfortunately the problem hadn’t been resolved and O’Young retired soon into the race, his third retirement of the season.

“It was not a fitting finish to the weekend we’ve had here in Brazil,” said O’Young. “STR had done a fantastic job all weekend and we’ve had very strong pace throughout. The car performed extremely well during the qualifying and races, unfortunately the gearbox let us down today.”

“The problem already came mid-way through race one, with the problem being our third gear. It gradually became worse throughout the race so I took the car a step back to get it to the finish line. Although it is our best finish of the season, it isn’t a good mood since we know we could’ve achieved more this weekend.”

“With that being said, we’ve made fantastic progress and most importantly, we have the pace to compete. Although the USA race is 2 months away, I’m already thinking about it and I hope to carry the form we had here in Brazil over to Sonoma.”