Monte Carlo, 24th May 2015 - Indonesia’s Sean Gelael scored his first points in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series in the Monaco Grand Prix support race with a superb eighth place in his Jagonya Ayam with Carlin car.
In the gambling paradise of Monte Carlo, the roulette wheel of motorsport fortune finally spun in Sean’s favour as he kept calm amid numerous accidents to rise up the order from 18th on the starting grid.
The Sunday morning race, which acted as a curtain raiser to the Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix, was a great contrast to Friday for Gelael. He had just completed his first few laps of the circuit in free practice when he moved over to let a faster car past and lightly brushed the barrier. Despite trying to get the car bump-started while rolling downhill, there was not enough battery voltage and Sean was out of the session.
Therefore he spent Saturday’s qualifying session playing catch-up with the rest of the field. As a rookie to Monaco this was a tough act, but he finally found a groove near the end of the session and was able to place his car 18th on the grid.
The drama started right at the start of the race, with a pile-up at the first corner eliminating many of the leading runners. Sean kept well to the inside, avoiding all the drama, and was immediately promoted nine places to ninth position. Two laps later an enormous accident at the same corner occurred just in front of Gelael, who was able to once again avoid the crash and found himself in seventh place.
The race was stopped to clear up the accident damage and restarted with just under 20 minutes of racing to go. Straight away Sean settled in to seventh place, pulling away from Swiss racer Alex Fontana behind him and chasing Frenchman Aurelien Panis in front.
A few laps later, the recovering Oliver Rowland, who had been delayed in the first-lap collision and was the fastest man on the track, demoted Sean to eighth as they passed the yachts at the harbourside chicane. Rowland then passed Panis too.
Panis had begun to pull away, but in the closing stages Gelael began to close up and with one lap to go the gap was just one second. Sean had improved on his qualifying time by half a second, while most of the others were much slower than in qualifying, indicating how much he progressed in the race.
“Finally luck is on our side!” said the 18-year-old Gelael after the race. “I had just seven laps in free practice so I was playing catch-up in qualifying, and now finally something good has happened.
“I really found a groove by the end of qualifying and once all the accidents had happened in the race it was a case of staying out of trouble for me and learning as much as I could. OK, I had some luck but this made up for bad luck before in the first round at Motorland Aragon. All I have to say is God is Great! Or #GodIsGreat!”
Tom Dillmann made use of his experience around the Monte Carlo circuit to take third place, his first podium finish of the season, in the Jagonya Ayam with Carlin car, completing an excellent weekend for the team.
There is now no rest for Sean and the other Formula Renault 3.5 competitors, who head straight to Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium for the next round on 29th-31st May. (ms/arl)
