O’Young gets ‘season rolling’ with independents’ win

Darryl O’Young bounced back from qualifying to take victory in the Yokohama Independents’ Trophy in race two in Belgium, finishing within two seconds of overall race winner Tarquini in Bamboo Engineering’s brand new Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T.

O’Young’s fifth place in the independents’ class in race one, and victory in race two leaps the Bamboo Engineering driver up to fourth place in the category, seven points down on Kristian Poulsen who retired in race two after contact with Tiago Monteiro.

“Standing starts is usuallly where I struggle, and so far in all the practices with this turbo engine I haven’t been able to get this car off the line once,” said O’Young to TouringCarTimes.

“In the race here we were able to get a perfect start and pass two cars in the process, so from there we knew we had the pace, I was just really trying be smooth to conserve the tyres and make sure I’m there at the end of the race.”

O’Young was closing down on the top three of Gabriele Tarquini, Alain Menu & Tiago Monteiro in the final few laps, but admitted to not wanting to try and heroics and risk the class victory.

“I think I could have challenged Tiago a bit at the end there as he was struggling with tyres, but I really wanted to get our season rolling with an independents’ win and didn’t want to get into any trouble.”

“Everybody at RML, Chevrolet and Bamboo has worked non-stop to get this car ready for this race, so I just wanted to reward everybody for their efforts with this independents’ win.”