A Friday evening of changing major components paid off for Julian Fameliaris with a fifth place in the opening race of the 2022 Mobil 1 V8 Supercars championship this past weekend (January 28-29) at Zwartkops Raceway.
Friday’s practice pace saw Fameliaris heading into the Qualifying session with confidence and he posted the seventh-fastest time for Saturday’s Race 1 grid. But he retired during the session with driveshaft issues. This saw the Lube-Net Di Matteo Racing team changing components into the evening to be ready for Saturday’s 10:00 race start.
Fameliaris drove a well-controlled first race, battling for position with Richard Fuller in the opening stages before holding off Antonie Marx and later Thomas Reib in the second part of the race after a safety-car period. He finished the race in fifth place.
“Following our late-Friday issues, it was good to come back and have a good race and take valuable points in Race 1. We also looked competitive which is certainly a positive to build on” said Fameliaris.
For the reverse grid second race, he started on the front row and soon passed Marx for the lead. Franco di Matteo quickly made his way through the field and passed Fameliaris for the race lead, but soon afterwards the race was red-flagged due to an accident. At the restart, his Chevrolet Corvette developed a problem that resulted in his retirement.
“The cockpit was filled with smoke. This is one of those situations where it can be something small or something major and you ideally don’t want to risk it, especially not with such a short gap to our next race weekend. Coming into the pits would’ve taken us out of contention for any result of significance, so I decided to rather park it right there. It’s a tough call to make especially when we were going very well, but it’s something you rather would not want to regret not doing.”
The next outing for Fameliaris will be this coming weekend at the postponed 2021 season finale as part of the Kyalami 9 Hour. This will be Fameliaris’ second outing at the circuit and although he is not in contention for the title, he is looking forward to finishing his double-header weekend in good form.
Produced and distributed by Brandsponential on behalf of Julian Fameliaris
