Hello everyone and welcome to Shanghai ahead of this weekend’s Chinese V-Prix, round three of the 2018 season. Joining us for today’s Thursday press conference on the back row are Will Ingram of Ingram Grand Prix and Dylan Lopez of Lopez FV Team. On the front row we have Cory Evans from Koenigsegg Team Holmqvist, Nick Forrest of North Star Racing, and Adam Blocker from FIRST Motorsport. Welcome to you all. We’ll start today’s questions with you, Will. You only just missed out on scoring points in Japan, but to be fair a lot of teams performed well, and the only retirements were the two Meteors. Were you disappointed to not score or was it as you expected really? Will Ingram: Bit of a downer that weekend after the high of Australia. Jean should have scored points but for his tyres pretty much failing and James drove very well to recover. We are aiming for points every race and not scoring was a blow – hopefully we can score this weekend. Reporter: Regardless of not scoring in Japan, this is still the best opening two rounds ever for Ingram! Do you expect to somewhat match your 2016 season or is that a bit too much to hope for? WI: I did not know that! Well the team will be happy to know that. Ultimately, I don’t think this car is as good as 2016 and we perhaps put too much effort into that season as 2017 was a disaster. 2015 is a more realistic target in point scoring terms. Reporter: Continuing with reflecting on the race in Japan, Nick, we’ll get your thoughts on Judson’s troubles there in a minute but firstly; it’s been a pretty tough start to 2018 for him through no fault of his own really. Would you agree that he needs a good race in Shanghai or is it too early to worry about these things? Nick Forrest: I think it’s definitely too early. If anything, luck’s just gone against him so far, as you said, with the strategy mix-up in Australia, then the aforementioned incident with Alvarez in Japan. We’re only two races into the season, there’s sixteen left to go, which should be plenty of time for Judson to start scoring some results. He is aware, though, that Gabriele’s gotten off to a very strong start in his VWRS campaign this year – he’s got eyes on an FV seat in the future, of course – so hopefully that can give Judson a little extra motivation. Reporter: Now, coming back to that incident. The stewards finally came to a decision last week that there’ll be no further action taken. Would you care to comment on the decision and do you think Sergio needs to calm it a little, given that he’s crashed into the back of people in both of his first two races? NF: I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit disappointed, given how the collision affected Judson’s race, but I can totally see the stewards’ point of view on it. A lot of drivers were making similar moves to Judson coming out of the pits, and ours just happened to be the one where it went wrong. I’m sure Sergio would rather it hadn’t happened either – no driver wants to be making contact to that level – but Formula Virtual is a significant step up from the feeder series, after all. Everyone’s made the odd rookie mistake when they first arrived, most of them have mellowed out over time, and I’ve every faith Sergio can do the same. Although we’d prefer it if our cars weren’t tangled with out there in the meantime, though! Reporter: Absolutely! Over the winter break, North Star signed Johan Halvosen. Do you think it was a huge signing for the team to acquire such a highly rated young driver? NF: You could look at it that way if you wanted, I suppose. Johan showed tremendous pace throughout his time at Meteor, and there was an awful lot of interest in him when his contract was up for this year, and rightly so, I think. We had to fend off some quite strong offers from other teams, but he saw enough potential with North Star to come on board, and straight away repaid that with…almost, points in his first race for us. I think it’s only a matter of time before he opens his account this year, and we’re both hoping to be up at the sharp end of the grid again soon, both the team and Johan. Reporter: Great, thanks Nick! Coming over to you now Dylan, this season is Lopez’ fifth season in Formula Virtual, including the two years as Warrior. Where do you feel you need to be aiming this season and beyond in terms of the constructors’ standings? Do you feel like you should be having a season soon where you’re more consistently scoring points? Dylan Lopez: We were hoping this season would be a stepping stone toward a bigger future. Based off of the opening races, every point is going to count for us and our immediate rivals the deeper we get into the season. We looked like getting some with Wags in Melbourne, but as we know that unfortunately didn’t turn out to be. It’s our goal to begin to climb back up the pecking order going forward and staying there, but for the time being we need to make the most of our opportunities in today’s world before we make our next proper challenge for something bigger. Reporter: Ostberg has started the season reasonably well, hasn’t he? Does he seem to be getting up to speed about as well as you expected him to? DL: Ostberg’s started off a little bit below what we were hoping to be honest. He’s been more or less okay in the races, but we want him to improve his qualifying especially so he can, like I mentioned before, make the most of the opportunities he gets to score crucial points for the team. We’ve known for years he would get his opportunity to strut his stuff and he just needs time to settle into the new environment around him. Reporter: Is it important for Lopez to have someone of Elroy’s calibre in the team? DL: Wagner has been nothing short of exceptional for us. Having his quality and professionalism around the team and we all love working with him as much as he loves working with us. Everybody knows what he’s done in the past and simply having him here has been simply brilliant. He’s contracted for another season and we can’t express just how grateful we are of his services thus far. Reporter: Question here for Cory, Nick, and Adam. The three of you are now in your third season, who would you say has made the best go of it so far and do you think any of you could someday challenge the so called ‘big three’? NF: I think there’s a case could be made for all of us in one way or another. FIRST finished in the best position out of the three of us in the Constructors’ Championship in the first two seasons, North Star had the fastest car of the three in our first season, and then scored our maiden victory in the second, and Holmqvist seem to have made progress throughout all three seasons so far rather than sliding back a little at any point. I don’t think any of us would be here if we didn’t think we could make it to the front, though, and take the fight to the top teams, but in terms of North Star, we definitely hope to be scoring more victories sooner rather than later. AB: I think FIRST has been the best of the three teams so far because we have finished in the best Constructors’ position in both of the last two years, and that’s the single most important category for any team in FV. However, as Nick alluded to, I think all three of our teams have demonstrated to be competitive teams that could win a title one day. The results of our three teams are even stronger when you compare them against the likes of Lopez, AMR, and Ocelot who came in as new teams before us. Cory Evans: I can only echo other comments, we all three have done well. Nick’s answer sums it up for me too. As for challenging the big three, absolutely. That is of course the aim, and sooner rather than later. Reporter: Sticking with you Cory, it was an excellent performance in Japan from your drivers and team in general. Were you expecting the weekend to be so much better than Melbourne? CE: Japan was good, but not exceptional. We were hoping for consistent double top eight results at least, but we seem off. Japan was far better than Australia which was a disaster, we are still analysing what went wrong there. We aim to improve and want to be fighting for podiums. Reporter: This is the first season Holmqvist are using Koenigsegg V12 engines, after switching from Renault. How’s the partnership going so far and is the V12 working well for you? CE: Koenigsegg have been fantastic and fully focused on us. Having everything now within one factory makes for simple life. We get on really well and they have built a really good first engine, we are very pleased and believe this to lead to a very long-term deal. Reporter: Of course, you’ve signed two highly rated drivers for this season in Will Hoskins and Tumo Kinnumen. How do you feel they’ve started the year and fitted into the team so far? CE: Both have been exceptional, but we would expect no less. The fact they have worked together before makes life easy, as they do not need to learn each other, just the car and the team, and they are very open and happy to data share and move us forwards as a team. Reporter: Great stuff. Adam, Hutchinson was dropped for this season in favour of retaining Oleksandr Zozulya and placing Felix Perez into a race seat. Would you agree it was quite a surprising decision considering how well he performed last year? And how well has Felix started in your eyes? Adam Blocker: Dropping Hutchinson was a risky decision, as he had proven to be a reliably fast driver at the FV level. Replacing anyone like that with a rookie is going to be a risk. However, the team and I have confidence in Felix that he will be able to repeat what he has done in the junior formulae and become a successful driver at the FV level. Felix has had a solid start to the season in what admittedly is a poorly performing car. If anything, our current car takes some pressure off of him and gives him time to settle into FV. Reporter: You mention this year’s car performing poorly. There has definitely been a huge drop off in performance in comparison to last year’s car, and it’s been speculated amongst many in the paddock that FIRST over developed in 2017. Do you agree that this was the case? AB: I disagree with that notion. Reporter: Fair enough. Well, is there a long-term plan in place at FIRST? With the two relatively young drivers and the car’s current pace, it looks like you guys might be looking to the future a little bit? AB: There is a long-term plan in place. In fact, we are still following a plan that we laid out pre-2016 with some modification to allow for regulation changes and actual performance results. Our performance this season is worse than initially anticipated, but overall, I think we are on a decent track. Hopefully our performances will improve over the course of the season. Reporter: Will, the Ingram-Franklin relationship is well known in the paddock, how much would you say the partnership helps Ingram? WI: I’d say it’s very mutually beneficial! I don’t want to get into details, but Franklin helped us out with engines during BMW’s internal debate on whether to participate in 2014. Since then it’s good to have a friendly face in the paddock. We hope to move further up the grid and this partnership is vital to that goal. Reporter: Question to everyone here. It was announced by Formula Virtual CEO Nic Morley at the end of March that we’ll be having our first ever night race in Bahrain this season. If you could pick any, are there any other tracks you’d like to race at night? Do you want to start Adam? AB: I wouldn’t want to race any of the current races at night, but a night race at Singapore would be pretty cool. WI: I’m sure Indy would look special – especially the big banked final turn. Maybe that’s a little unfeasible..? NF: Of the current races, I think it’d be really interesting to see Indy in the dark as well. There’s the occasional oval race under the lights in the US already, and despite being on the infield track, I can’t see why that wouldn’t be as much of a spectacle. Reporter: Dylan and Cory.. anything to add? DL: Yeah, I agree with these guys, Indy could be awesome. CE: Night or day race makes no difference to me. If anything, I prefer day time races, I bump into less things out the back of the paddock. Reporter: Ha! Good point! As usual now, what are everyone’s expectations for this weekend? And, of course, who do you think looks strongest? AB: My expectation is to finish top twenty with both cars. I hope that is possible with the right strategy and good performances from our drivers. In my opinion, Nathaniel Powers is the most likely driver to win in China. DL: We’re hoping this weekend is the first where we grasp the opportunity to begin scoring points. WI: Points. We need to get back up the order and cement our place as a top five team. CE: As before, we want both cars in the top eight as a minimum. Strongest is difficult, but it seems between DS Mathershaw and Downton, though you can never rule Franklin out. I am going left-field, Franklin will win to give us three different winners in three races. NF: Same expectations as the last couple of races for us, I think, get ourselves in the hunt for some points. We know how tricky it’s going to be, though, with such a tight midfield, but I think we’ve got the car and the drivers to come away with a result if all goes well. Top spot is quite hard to gauge, as ever, but we’ve had one for DS and one for Downton so far, I think it could be Franklin’s turn this time around. Reporter: Brilliant stuff, thanks guys. So, with that, we’ll bring this press conference to a close. Thank you to the…. The room suddenly goes black Jamie Franklin slams the double doors open at the rear of the room and marches in with a purpose Jamie Franklin: Is this really what this Championship has come down to? Interviewing a host of nobodies, whilst the most successful Formula Virtual team of all time gets disrespected by being left out once again? None of you should care what any of these guys has to say, with the exception of Will, they’re irrelevant, none of them have ever done anything worthy of being here and none of them ever will. But this isn’t about them. This is about my so-called “rivals”. Looks directly into the camera So, whilst you all sit there, hopefully as uncomfortable as you can possibly be, I want you to listen to me, I want you to digest this, because before I leave you in the doldrums of what you call a press conference with these insignificant teams, I have a lot of things to get off my chest. First of all, I’m addressing you, Robert. I don’t hate you, Robert. I don’t even dislike you. I like you a hell of a lot more than I like most people in the paddock. I hate… this idea… that you’re the best… because you’re not. I’m the best. I’m the best in the world. There’s only one thing you’re better at than I am, and that’s kissing Nic Morley’s ass. You’re as good at kissing Nic Morley’s ass as Bradley Downton is. I am the best manager in the world. I’ve been the best ever since day one when I walked into this company, and I’ve been vilified and hated since that day because I’m able to do whatever it takes to win. Do you want to know why the rules changed so drastically after 2015? It’s because I don’t fit Nic Morley’s vision of a competitive Formula. I don’t fit the mould of a team who is marketable, because we don’t care about the competition, we just care about winning. Unlike the kid-friendly “top teams” of DS Mathershaw and Downton, who just so happened to be able to win their first titles as soon as the rules changed. Despite all of this, I have continued to prove to everybody in the world over the last six years, that nobody can touch me. Yet no matter how many times I prove it, I’m not on your little collector’s cups, I’m not on the cover of the program, our merchandise mysteriously goes missing, I’m barely promoted. I rarely even show up in the signature for the show. Just think about that, the greatest team to ever grace the presence of Formula Virtual is barely in the title for the show, when these lesser teams get exposure. It makes me sick. Oh and hey, let me get something straight… those of you cheering me right now, you’re just as bigger part of this as anyone else, because you’re the ones sipping out of the collector cups, you’re the ones that buy the damned programs that my team isn’t on the cover of, and then at five in the morning at the airport, you try to shove it in my face thinking you can get an autograph and sell it on eBay because you’re too lazy to get a real job! I’d like to think that perhaps one day I won’t be conspired against just for simply being a superior talent, for working harder, and longer than the rest of these inept and incompetent outfits, but until that day… I’ve got two words for ya… Drops mic and walks off Reporter: Well.. er.. to be honest I’m a little speechless here! I’d love to get your reactions guys but unfortunately we’re being told we’re out of time. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of discussion about this for a while! Thank you to everyone joining us today and don’t forget to tune in for Friday practice tomorrow! Comments are closed.
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