04/26/2009 Ana Beatriz, aka Bia, finished in 4th place in the fourth race of the season at Kansas Speedway last Sunday

The race was very tumultuous with many crashes, and the safety car came out five times. The race finished under yellow

Bia started in third, went down to fifth after 10 laps, but she gained her position again after overtaking J.R .Hildebrand and Mario Romancini. After the third yellow she passed Wade Cuningham for second and started a battle for the lead with Sebastian Saavedra, who won the race. From lap 20, her car started to over-steer and on lap 49, she lost the rear in Turn 4 and lost two positions.

“The track conditions changed a lot from Saturday to Sunday,” said the Healthy Choice/Sam Schmidt Motorsports driver. “Yesterday (Saturday) rained a lot at night, and the track was green again today. The wind picked up and Turn 4 was very dangerous during the race. In fact, I lost the rear of the car behind Saavedra at Turn 4. I almost crashed into the wall but I could control the car and come back to action. I lost momentum and two positions because of that”,

 The weekend at Kansas Speedway, a very fast tri-oval and, where overtaking was notoriously tough, was a bit difficult for Bia. On Saturday, both of the practices, where she finished third and fourth on the time sheet, had lots of yellow flags. Also a battery problem shortened her second practice for 20 minutes.

“The car wouldn’t start because the battery was dead. Because of that, we lost 10 minutes and right after that we had a yellow flag.  With all this we couldn’t try as many things to improve our setup for qualifying”.

At the end, the weekend was an improvement. Bia moved up two positions in the standings, to 7th, with 101 points, 29 points off the leader, Jonathan Summerton. Each win in Firestone Indy Lights scores 50 points.

“We didn’t have a great car for the race,” said Bia. “We had a good car, but not enough to get pole or to win. Even with that, we fought for the win. It was a shame we lost the rear on the lap 49 because we should have been on the podium. Now, we have to think on how to improve for Indy.”

The fifth race of the season will be the Freedom 100  on May 22^nd, on Carb Day for Indy 500.

Kansas Speedway - Results

1 Sebastian Saavedra
2 Wade Cunningham
3 Mario Romancini
4 Ana Beatriz
5 Martin Plowman
6 Daniel Herrington
7 Jonathan Summerton
8 James Davison
9 Andrew Prendeville
10 Jay Howard
11 Junior Strous
12 James Hinchcliffe
13 Charlie Kimball
14 JR Hildebrand
15 Dillon Battistini
16 Pipa Mann
17 Gustavo Yacaman
18 Sean Guthrie
19 Pablo Donoso
20 Ali Jackson
21 Rodrigo Barbosa
22 Sergei Mokshantserv
23 Jesse Mason
24 Richard Philippe

Photos
1/4: Bia em Kansas, by Kaaveh Akbari/Sam Schmidt Motorsports
05: Bia em Kansas, by Shawn Payne/IndyCar


Texto: Estela Craveiro - MTb 15.590