FSR 2015 PRO R1: ZERO snatches early points with top 10 finish!

Sunday marked the opening round of the 2015 Thrustmaster Formula Sim Racing Pro Series, with the Croatian outfit set to participate in their first FSR Grand Prix.

Q1

In the early stages of Q1 Will Barnes proved the '#28 car had some pace, sitting in the top 10 in the opening minutes of the session. It was of course no surprise that he would be pushed down, yet it allowed the team to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that ZERO Sim Racing are competetive.

As the session progressed Will went out for another 2 flying laps but had some issues trying to navigate traffic. Fortunately however, his final lap in Q1 allowed him to go within a tenth of his all-time personal best. At the time of setting the lap Barnes was P15, however with several cars still out on track he was later bumped down into P17.

Race: The formation lap featured some rather comical and cringe-worthy mistakes at the back of the pack, with the sole ZERO car lucky to avoid being hit as cars behind underestimated the pace as cars slowed towards the end of the lap.

To the race start and Barnes got away reasonably well, dodging the first corner melee that played out in front of him and making up 6 places in the process.

Despite being last of the cars on the option tyre, Will was steadily increasing the gap to cars behind in order to make ZERO's 2-stop strategy work.

Towards the end of the first stint Barnes came under pressure from the Eventa car of Andrea Cannata, who with the aid of DRS was able to catch right up to the back of Barnes. On around lap 10 Barnes switched to the prime tyres, and thanks to the fantastic work of the race strategist Joe Ethier and engineers Tom Alcock and Josh Cresswell, Will rejoined the track in free air.

The long middle stint was a challenging one indeed as a mistake from Will in sector three allowed BEASTMODE's Ben Eastman to close up and get into DRS firing-range. But, with some consistent pace Will steadily increased the gap safeguarding his top ten position.

On lap 24 Will came under heavy fire from Andrea ventura in the Origin Front Row Racing car along with ACR's David Cook, albeit a lap down. With older tyres the task of keeping Andrea behind was too much and with DRS he eased up into P8, relegating Barnes to P9.

After his final stop Will was under pressure from Juan Sanchez, who was within DRS range come the final lap. Luckily, his mistake in the final sector allowed Will to take his first top ten finish in the FormulaSimRacing Pro Series!

Interview with Will Barnes:

I couldn't have hoped for a better start to my first full year in the Pro Series! The team worked really well to make sure everything went smoothly and I wouldn't have been able to achieve this result without them. Also a huge thank you to our sponsors, InsideSimRacing and OnWheelsTV. Qualifying was a pleasant surprise, managed P17 which is a huge improvement from last year where more often than not I was stone dead last. Could have managed maybe P16 but all in all I was pretty pleased. I had my heart in my mouth on the formation lap and race start when I saw cars suddenly stop and crash right behind me. Got a decent launch off the line but had to be super careful to avoid getting collected, came very close to touching someone but just avoided it. Pace on first stint was pretty rubbish gathering that I was on option but the main thing was that I managed to conserve them enough to reach lap 9/10. Second stint was better and had a nice battle with Andrea (sorry if I moved suddenly when defending I was adjusting pitstop settings. Middle stint was alright but being caught by Ventura pretty quickly. Managed to keep my nose clean when racing side by side and only lapped once! Got a bit hectic mid race with Ben hunting me down, but with some pushing I increased the gap and got out of DRS firing range. With a few laps to go Juan was catching me so had to just focus on keeping it clean. All in all a pretty epic race for me at least, thanks to the hosts and broadcasters as usual.