2016 Round 5 - Spanish Grand Prix @ Malaga International Raceway Park

PENALTIES
In the aftermath of the rainfest @ Russia, MasterCard Lola's Roy van Helvoort has been sent to the back of the grid, in spite of qualifying last anyway.

Qualifying/Pre-Race Headlines
Malaga's racetrack has gone some changes since the last year. The first of which is the infamous turn 17, as it has been officially flattened. This has placed even less stress on the engineers in the garage as they prepare for this weekend. Another change was the hill coming into turn 18, has also been flattened for safety reasons. Back in 2012, Lorenzo Sanchez was nearly killed after launching his car on the hill in turn 18 and flew into the catchfence at 180+ miles an hour, splitting the car in pieces and Sanchez nearly thrown out of his car. Since then, Malaga has had trouble making the calendar until this year after winning the bidding for it's placement as the Spanish Grand Prix against Catalunya, which was Formula X's test track this year.

Duha Boulos has returned to his #30 Subaru Racing Team race car after spending his one-race ban @ Russia.

Coming into qualifying, there were quite a few surprises. The first of which was TrollScience Formula X's lack of aerodynamics as they qualified P29-P30. Another surprise was Mario Sa's lack of high-speed experience placing him 21st as it was a huge embarrassment for SkullCandy Ferrari. The third surprise was American United Racing, as they placed in P15-P16 in Qualifier 2. Above all, as we all thought that Diago Power Racing would get 1-2 on the grid, their lack of handling costed them dearly as Akio Matsumura from Harachi Racing Technologies has taken the pole for this race.

Qualifying Results:

Finguy: "IES duties have subdued so, this will be my first trip and first time seeing these cars race. I wonder how they'll greet me here then?"

Finguy: "Is this what the two of Adams and Cox been doing? Color me impressed to help the team..."

Lafitte Making Appeal

Mattieu Petit lost a gear and was going slow in the front straight. Spencer Fullerton rans into the back of Petit, wrecking himself and Petit out of the race. However, Petit received the blame.

The team principle said about this, "Petit was off the pace which is ashamed. Then Fullerton crashed into him. I'm looking at the collision many times, and I don't see him blocking Fullerton or the Skullcandy. He kept his line. He may broke earlier than Fullerton which he doesn't have the speed due to gear 6 loss. There was no intention to wreck either driver behind. Personally, I think he was slammed."

Lafitte proposes the appeal, "There should be no penalty. I can deal with a reduction. He's a rookie so he is bound to make mistakes. It's a life lesson for Petit. I'm sure Petit will learn improve in the latter part of the year."