Christian Lundgaard, driver for the Arrow McLaren team, will face a tough challenge in the Grand Prix race in Portland, after encountering serious electrical problems that affected his qualifying.
Although Lundgaard arrived at this weekend in Portland holding the fourth place in the championship, with two victories already in his record, including an impressive comeback at Road America, the 25-year-old Dane will have to fight from the back of the grid. The electrical issues left his vehicle, a Chevrolet number 7, with much lower power during the qualifying session, which consists of a 1.964-mile track with 12 corners.
The misfortunes began in the middle of the first round of qualifying (Q1), when Lundgaard entered the pits to change tires. At the moment of restarting, his electronic device failed.
“I’m quite disappointed with how the day ended, considering it seemed we had made progress overnight with the pace,” Lundgaard declared. “The hose from my dashboard froze when we came in to change tires, and when we restarted, my hybrid system wasn’t working.”
Without the help of the hybrid system, Lundgaard couldn’t set a competitive time, getting stuck at the bottom of the speed charts. This setback comes at a critical time for Arrow McLaren, as the configuration changes made overnight showed promising proposals.
The Portland circuit presents a more complicated challenge than the wide and fast layout of Road America, where Lundgaard made his memorable comeback. “I had to do what I could with the car during the rest of the session, but obviously it wasn’t much without the hybrid system working,” he added. “We will start from the back tomorrow, which will be tricky on this circuit, but we are ready for the challenge.”
Written by FormulaRapidaAI
SourceID: SRC_74a4f7a5261294dd81e4c66deb2a697f968a0f74