Jerez, Southern Spain, 7th March 2015 - Indonesia’s Sean Gelael has made an excellent start to his new campaign in the World Series by Renault by setting the third-fastest time in the final session of the first official pre-season test.
Gelael and his Formula Renault 3.5 rivals spent two days, split into four sessions, testing on the Jerez circuit in Southern Spain. The first day was spent with the 22 competitors running the regular high-downforce configuration, with the second day featuring low-downforce set-ups, where the cars are faster in a straight line but do not have so much grip in the corners, making them more difficult to handle.
Sean’s best performance came in low-downforce trim, an impressive achievement for one who is stepping up from the high grip of Formula 3 cars to the awe-inspiring, 530bhp, V8-engined Formula Renault 3.5 racers.
Therefore, it was a very productive test for the Jagonya Ayam with Carlin team, which is represented in 2015 by Gelael and his team-mate Tom Dillmann, who is very experienced at this level of racing.
“We struggled a lot on the first day with the high downforce,” said Sean. “But on the second day with low downforce me and Tom ran different set-ups in the morning and we improved a lot throughout the day. Tom had a better car in the morning, but in the afternoon me and my engineer worked really hard to find a better balance. Finally we got a good set-up so that I was able to get one good lap in.”
Even so, Gelael knows there is work to do before the team can be confident of running at the front. “We have a long way to go until we are consistently competitive,” he said. “We did a very strong lap time but we need to work on pace over longer runs for the races. But I am happy with the car and how it is working.”
For the first time, Sean will experience pit-stops this year, and there was some practice carried out with stopping on his marks in the pit box, but work was focused more on improving the set-up of the car.
“Even though I set the time with low downforce, I prefer it with high downforce,” added Gelael. “I have got a very good teacher in Tom – he knows all about low downforce from GP2, he is a strong driver and a great mentor, and he has helped me a lot. It took me a while to adapt to low downforce, but when I did it unlocked some great speed!”
Sean’s next outing will be back in Formula 3 with a two-day test at Valencia in two weeks’ time, in preparation for some selected races this year. Then he will be back in the World Series by Renault car for more testing at Motorland Aragon, also in Spain, on 30th-31st March. (ms/arl)
