DISAPPOINTING END TO SAILESH BOLISETTI’S DIJON WEEKEND

12May, Dijon–Prenois, France: Indian racing driver Sailesh Bolisetti’s second weekend of his 2013 Euro Race Car campaign at Dijon circuit ended on a disappointing note as he finished 18^th in the second and final race of the weekend.

Earlier in the weekend, chronic mechanical issues had left Sailesh’s team Scorpus Racing struggling with the Chevrolet Camaro SS during both the practice sessions and as a result the Indian driver got his first hard laps of the 3.8–kilometer circuit only in qualifying.

With just 15 minutes of qualifying, he could do no better than 19^th.

Things didn’t go any better come raceday as Sailesh had an off–track excursion in the opening laps at the fast turn one, after another car lost control right in front of him, leaving him nowhere to go but into the gravel traps.As a result, he lost over four laps while the car was retrieved and spent another couple in the pits while the team looked the car over. Instead of retiring the team chose to keep running to let Sailesh gain some track time although with an out of alignment suspension, he could merely circulate and ultimately finished six laps down.

“It was a forgettable weekend. Everything that could go wrong, did, it couldn’t have been any worse”, remarked Sailesh.

In race two saw another start line incident prevented from making any progress once again as he was hit by the car behind during the rolling start.

“It was crazy, the pace car had just gone into the pits and all of a sudden I got a big hit from behind, which took off some of the rear bumper!

“It almost spun me out and I ended up dead last. From then on I just focused on finishing the race in one piece. The driver of the car later informed me that he had lost his brakes!” he exclaimed.

From there on Sailesh managed to overhaul a couple of cars and finish 17^thwith overheating brakes which forced him to coast earlier than normal and lose lap time.

The 24–year old from Vizag who has been supported for this round by Hon’ble Minister for Endowments for Andhra Pradesh, Shri C Ramachandraiah, had been hoping for a better result this weekend.

“Being a new circuit we needed a lot of track time and we had a chance to do it as the weather was perfect, but the reliability has been reallybad and we were just struggling to keep the car running”, said Sailesh summing up his weekend.

“As if that wasn’t enough we had incidents on track as well which really put us in the wall and now I’m just hoping for a better outing at the next round at Brands”, he concluded.

The next round of the Euro Racecar championship is scheduled at Brands Hatch on 8–9 June.