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In terms of results, the Asia Series wasn’t what we were expecting – for sure we had much more performance than the results showed, but we faced every type of problem possible there and it’s difficult to achieve the results when many things are going against you.
Sometimes we had some problems with pit-stops, but that wasn’t really the only thing that went wrong. We had penalties for pitting under the safety car when we would have run out of fuel, punctured tyres, engine and gearbox failures – all types of troubles that you wouldn’t expect.
For sure if I had just been collecting the points that I lost through these problems I would have had an easy second place in the drivers’ championship and iSport would have finished in the same position in the teams’ standings. I think overall the pecking order was pretty much what we expected it to be. There were some more experienced drivers doing well, with occasionally a few surprises.
If the conditions had been normal I think we could probably have challenged for the championship as well. I’m pretty sure we would have been there or thereabouts to fight Romain Grosjean for the title – obviously it’s much easier to win something when there is no real competition because everybody else is having problems.
I think I was the only one with the performance to actually catch him – in most of the races we were either as quick as or quicker than him – so I believe that the problems really did hinder my performance, and obviously it was easier for him not to make any mistakes during the championship when he was not being pushed. He and ART nevertheless did a very good job, but we made that job easier for them with our problems.