Conquest Racing Nashville Race Recap

Conquest Racing disputed one of its shortest races this season at Nashville Superspeedway on Saturday evening and unfortunately it wasn’t on account of a rain shortened race. Conquest’s rookie drivers only completed a combined total of 116 laps in the Firestone Indy 200 when handling issues arose early on in the race. Enrique Bernoldi and Jaime Camara were respectively credited with the 20th and 21st positions.

Rookie Camara had a strong couple of first laps jumping up to 17th from his 23rd place on the grid. But when a yellow came out, Camara had no choice but to run over some debris left by the contact between Ryan Briscoe and Marco Andretti in order for him to avoid hitting Briscoe who was stopped in the middle of the track. Camara then came in for a pit stop under yellow after which the handling of his car was not the same. Camara did fight on for another 44 laps but damaged caused by the debris made the car not handle properly and Camara preferred to retire after 50 laps.

Teammate Bernoldi, didn’t have quite as good of a start as Camara losing a couple of positions, but the Brazilian quickly regained them after pitting for fuel only during the first caution period. His early pit stop then allowed him to make his way to third by lap 62 when the front-runners made their stops. Unfortunately for the Conquest rookie he ran out of fuel just before his scheduled pit stop. He did manage to make it back into the pits and was sent back out after falling a few laps down. After his stop, Bernoldi encountered some sudden handling issues and chose to retire from the race with 66 laps completed.

Conquest Racing returns to road racing next weekend where the team will be competing for a second time in its history at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the Honda Indy 200. The race will air live on ABC starting at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, July 20.

"I ran out of fuel which is a pity because I was doing a good race. After that I had some handling problems when I came out of the pits, I don’t know why so I decided to stop. I’m sure I can have a better result on a road course than on an oval so I’m looking forward to this next race."

"We started well. At the start of the race we made up quite a few positions and the car was behaving well. Then the yellow came out and I ran over a lot of debris to avoid Briscoe who was stopped in the middle of the track.

I don’t know if something under the car broke at that time because after that the car was not behaving well. It was the best decision to make because we still have two races in a row and I didn’t want to crash the car. Now we just have to focus on the next couple of races and prepare for that."

"We had a tough evening in Nashville . We still need to understand what happened with the fuel on Enrique’s car and the handling on Jaime’s. We will look at that early this week as well as regroup and start fresh again with the Mid-Ohio race. I am confident we will turn things around and get a good result there."

- Karina Redmond -