O’Young drops out of indies’ title contention

Bamboo Engineering driver Darryl O’Young has now dropped out of the contention for the 2011 WTCC independents’ trophy after a disastrous weekend for the 31-year-old in Shanghai.

O’Young is now out of the running for the independents’ title, after only picking up two points at the weekend at the Tianma circuit in Shanghai, China.

The Hong Kong driver’s weekend was already in trouble after qualifying, after only ending up 18th fastest in Q1 after a misjudgement in the changing conditions from wet to dry.

In race one, O’Young worked his way up to finish in 13th spot, losing ground later in the race as the rear-wheel drive BMWs came on strong. O’Young’s position was good enough to collect two points in the independents’ trophy, but a bizarre paperwork issue meant O’Young had to start even further back on the grid for race two after it was mistakenly believed that Bamboo had wanted to suspend parc fermé conditions for O’Young’s car, when it was meant to have been Taniguchi’s, which was heavily damaged on the final lap of the first race.

“I made a nice start from the back of the grid and overtook four cars into Turn 1 as I made a pass around the outside,” said O’Young. “I managed to make my way past another six cars as a few of them came together pushing me up to P11 overall. On lap two, I made an overtaking manoeuvre on Dudukalo, unfortunately on the exit he made contact with my right rear wheel breaking my suspension.”

O’Young is now 44 points down on independents’ trophy standings leader Kristian Poulsen, with just 43 available at the season finale at Macau in two weeks time.

“This is a very big disappointment for me in the season,” said O’Young. “However, this also takes title pressure off of me in Macau and I will push as hard as I can to take victory in front of my home fans.”