O’Young and Bennani clash ruled a racing incident

Darryl O’Young and Mehdi Bennani’s clash on lap five of race one at Macau was ruled a racing incident by the stewards, which saw O’Young out of race one and Bennani dropped to the back of the pack.

The stewards investigated O’Young’s part in the incident as the Bamboo Engineering Chevrolet driver and Proteam Racing’s Bennani were battling over fourth place.

“Bennani pushed me from behind on the mid-corner of Lisboa which ran me out wide a bit and he got his nose inside and I tried to defend it, I couldn’t tell where he was and we made contact,” said O’Young.

“That’s not really a way to push and pass, especially on a circuit like this. I think he knew he didn’t have the pace to keep up and tried to get by that way.”

“The team did an amazing job again , this is the second year in a row they’ve had to salvage the car between races, this year the team again did an excellent job, the car was good for the second race, it was just a shame we had to start from the pit lane, (as) we just missed the pit lane entry.”

O’Young was deemed as the guilty party with the stewards viewing that Bennani had a fair overlap on the right side of the Chevrolet, but ruled the contact as a racing incident with no further action taken.

“I had contact with O’Young, I overtook him and he closed the door. It’s not easy to to (keep the car straight) when we touched and he destroyed my first race,” said Bennani.

The Moroccan driver had one of his better weekends of the year, finishing in the top ten in every session. Despite falling to the back of the pack in race one, he recovered to finish ninth and also took a sixth place finish in race two.

“The car was really very good, very fast this weekend and easy to drive. I think the team gave me a really good car this weekend.”