Zeta Corse has disappointing day, two retirements in Jerez

After experiencing so much success throughout the 2014 World Series by Renault season, the Zeta Corse team continued to face adverse fortunes in the championship’s Jerez finale.

In the qualifying 2 session held this morning, Spaniard Roberto Merhi cruised to a stunning pole, topping his closest rival by almost three tenths of a second. Unfortunately, he was later penalized by the stewards for an alleged blocking manouver, and pushed to third place. In race 2, he drove hard to regain the lead straight away, but a mechanical issue got him stuck in the pits for many valuable seconds before forcing him to stop for good on lap 8.

After a troubled second qualifying session, Russian racer Roman Mavlanov was off to a nice start and seemed set for a clean recovery drive until a first-lap contact damaged his car and brought him to retire.

For the team is now time to look forward. After the unlucky closing stint of 2014, Zeta Corse is ready to start the offseason activity needed to prepare for a full-scale championship attack in 2015.

Roberto Merhi – Q2: P3 – R2: DNF

“It’s been a tough weekend for us. Today, while I was fighting to recover, we were stopped by a pneumatic issue with the compressor. I got stuck at the pit-stop and then forced to go back to the garage for good. Anyway, it’s been a good season, with three wins and many podium finishes. We fought for the title until the end, but probably this wasn’t meant to be our weekend”.
Roman Mavlanov – Q2: P21 – R2: DNF

“It’s a pity that we didn’t have the chance to show our potential, and that our race ended with a contact so early. This clearly isn’t the way we wanted to end our season but we had a really tough luck today”.