Spa-Franchorchamps, 27th May 2015 - After his fantastic drive to score his first points in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series with eighth place in Monaco, Sean Gelael heads straight from the streets of glamorous Monte Carlo to the rolling forested countryside of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium for the next event.
Indonesian Gelael and the Formula Renault 3.5 competitors move back to a more conventional race weekend at Spa. Monaco was the series’ only Grand Prix support event, and now they return to headline status on the World Series by Renault package.
The JagonyaAyam with Carlin team will therefore experience the normal World Series weekend format, with Sean taking part in two qualifying sessions and two races on the challenging Spa circuit, renowned as one of the finest driving tracks in the world and which places a premium on car performance.
Spa is the first circuit this season where you can compare directly between the performance of the Formula Renault 3.5 car, a Formula 1 racer and the Formula 3 machinery that Gelael raced last season, and the statistics show that it is almost exactly halfway between Formula 3 and Formula 1, making it the ideal stepping stone to the top of the sport. During the 2014 season, the fastest lap in the Belgian Grand Prix was 1 minute 50.5 seconds, with the fastest lap in Formula Renault 3.5 being 2 minutes 01.4 seconds, and in Formula 3 it was 2 minutes 11.1 seconds.
The Carlin team did not compete in Formula Renault 3.5 in 2014, but it has a colourful history at Spa that illustrates how Sean is following in some illustrious footsteps. For example, the first visit of the series to Spa happened in 2006, when a certain Sebastian Vettel was running second in his Carlin car before an enormous crash in which he almost lost a finger – still the scariest accident of his career!
Jaime Alguersuari finished sixth at Spa with Carlin in 2009, while in 2011 there was a win for Jean-Eric Vergne – both these drivers went on to compete in Formula 1 with Toro Rosso. Another Carlin driver, Kevin Magnussen, was a winner with two pole positions in 2012, before he stepped up to Formula 1 with McLaren.
Other leading international drivers such as Robert Wickens and Mikhail Aleshin have also won at Spa with Carlin.
Gelael therefore knows that success in Formula Renault 3.5 can lead to great things in the sport. As a rookie to the category he will be focusing on repeating his Monaco points, but as last weekend proved anything can happen in the world of motorsport!
“Spa is completely different from Monaco,” says Sean. “The contrast is probably the biggest between any two circuits on the Formula Renault 3.5 calendar because we go from tight corners between the barriers to long, sweeping bends that are seriously fast. But confidence is everything in motor racing, and the great result from Monaco gives us a lot of momentum heading into next weekend. I hope to use that to gain more good results.” (ms/arl)
