Mansell's Impresses in USA
MANSELL IMPRESSES ON MENARDS INFINTI PRO SERIES DEBUT
Scott Mansell was running in a solid sixth place in the Infiniti Pro series race at Sears Point on his USA race debut on Sunday when a glitch in the cars ECU put pay to his hopes of a higher finish.
Even though he was struggling with substantial setup problem in practice, Mansell managed to post the third fastest time around the challenging newly named Infineon raceway roadcourse in Sonoma, California.
Although all the other drivers improved there times in qualifying, Scott's bad luck continued and further setup problems hampered his session meaning he could only achieve a time that was significantly slower than his earlier practice time placing him seventh on the grid.
It was only after final practice that the root of the problem became apparent through the discovery of a loose mechanism within the rollbar. This was fixed but meant Mansell would start the race in a car with an unpredicable balance.
Once the race has started it became quickly apparent that the car had to much understeer and Mansell battled on driving around the problem as best he could. Although running in sixth, he managed to match the pace of the leaders until cruel luck would see the ECU fail on lap 24 out of 30.
Scott Mansell: "Although we had some real bad luck this weekend, I know we can run at the front with time to work on the set-up and I look forward to racing at Watkins Glen in September."