After the 2018 Formula Virtual season's opening race in Melbourne, Australia, a reporter caught up with Phoenix Motorsport team principal Alex Easton as he was making his way back to the garage after watching the podium celebrations. Reporter: Alex, how's things? Good first race!
Alex Easton: Hey, yeah brilliant! That was a cracker, wasn't it? Reporter: Yeah, sure was. How was the race from your point of view? AE: Bit of a shame Ruiz and Klaas crashed. Klaas, especially, could've really been one to watch making his way through the field but it is what it is. Those guys up there (pointing back at the podium) did well though. I thought all three drove brilliantly today, hats off to them. Plenty of good battles throughout the field though and the cars look bloody beautiful! Reporter: They certainly do! What about your guys? AE: Well, Sergio didn't finish but the pace from both our guys today was really well beyond what we expected. Sergio got really unlucky to get caught up in three incidents today; the first one was obviously at turn nine on the first lap when Klaas and Perez crashed, although in fairness maybe we were lucky that Sergio didn't suffer any major damage. Carson got stuck behind one of the Meteor's for a while after that, and Sergio showed some phenomenal pace to close the fifteen or so second gap to him, we told the guys to swap around to let Sergio try to get past. After their first pit stops we swapped them back. Then came that huge incident with Ruiz, Yoshida, Inman and a few others; Carson managed to get through pretty easily but Sergio lost more time there. That incident actually helped us a lot though, we reckon it gained Carson four places in the grand scheme of things. Then, of course, on lap thirty one I believe it was, Vocquelin went defensive into the fast left-right and it really caught Sergio off guard. At first he was livid, he thought Vocquelin had brake checked him effectively but it really wasn't anyone's fault. Just one of those things really! Anyway, after that, Carson wasn't really battling anyone at all until the last few laps when he had a great little tussle with Hoskins, Will managed to get past in the end as you'd expect, but then a lap or two later they had a coming together which cost both of them their front wings... and put Carson right into the path of Adrien who was coming round to win the race! Safe to say everyone in the garage tensed up when we saw it on the monitors, the last thing we wanted was to affect the guys out front in any way. Thankfully, Carson and Adrien avoided each other and we got fourteenth. Reporter: I bet there was a big cheer at the end wasn't there? AE: Absolutely. Sergio was back in the garage by then too and he probably cheered the loudest! We've got a great little team of people here, I'm so pleased for everyone back at the factory in Manchester too. Now we need to build on that strong result and get our heads down for Japan. Reporter: Well done today anyway Alex, thanks!
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