Conquest Racing Iowa Race

Conquest Racing’s oval learning continued today at Iowa Speedway during the Iowa Corn Indy 250 presented by Pioneer. The team was off to a strong start but fortunes turned before the end of the race and once again the results didn’t show the progress that was made by the team. Jaime Camara had a problem with a defective battery and then retired after 133 laps taking the 20th spot on the results sheet. His teammate Enrique Bernoldi spun with less than 65 laps to go and crossed the finish line in 17th.

Before the battery failure, Camara was running strong and consistent making his way to 14th from his 24th place on the grid but on lap 101 a sudden loss of power kept him stuck in gear and he had to get towed into the pits. The problem was a defective battery which was quickly fixed but the Brazilian had already lost 12 laps to the leaders upon his return to the track. The Conquest rookie completed another 32 laps but as the laps went by his steering got heavier and heavier as the rubber built up on the track and eventually he ran out of physical strength to keep it going without crashing. He ended up 20th.

Contrary to his teammate, Enrique Bernoldi had a more difficult start and fell to 24th from his 17th spot on the starting grid but quickly made his way back up battling with Mario Moraes for the most part. By Lap 181, Bernoldi was up to 16th and was running 17th when oversteer and cold tires caused him to spin on lap 186. Fortunately, the Brazilian stayed clear of the wall and was able to continue after being towed back to pit lane but lost additional laps to the leaders. He finished the race in 17th position.

Conquest Racing now heads back to its Indianapolis-based shop for a couple of days to prepare the cars for next weekend’s SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway. The race takes place Saturday, June 28 and will be broadcast live on ESPN2 at 8:00 p.m. eastern time. Rookies will get an extra practice session on Thursday, June 26 before all the cars take to the track on Friday, June 27 for practice and qualifying.

"It was a good race to gain experience today and that was about it. (About what happened in turn 4) I had just pitted and was on cold tires and the car just snapped on me because of too much oversteer. Luckily I didn’t hit anything and was able to continue but I lost a lot of laps because of that. We now have to put this race behind us and look forward to Richmond ."

"We were running really well. This was the best race car I had so far this season. We were really consistent and fast. When I was running 14th we had a defective car battery and the car just shut down and stayed stuck in gear so I couldn’t do anything. I came into the pits so we could fix the problem but we lost some laps during that time.

We went back out but the steering was getting heavier and heavier and it got to a point that I didn’t have enough strength to turn it anymore. I decided to park it because it was that or the wall and I didn’t want to crash the car. It’s really frustrating because today was a day where we could have had a great result. We were strong out there, especially on the restarts. We have to focus on Richmond now and forget about this race."

"We had a lack of success today. We were running a good pace in the race as we keep on learning on these ovals. We’ve been making plenty of progress we just have not been able to show that in our results which is really unfortunate because the team is working really well together.

Fortunately we put two cars in the truck as we return to the shop. We’re turning our focus to Richmond where we hope that things finally go well until the end."

-Karina Redmond -