Darryl O’Young recovered from a difficult qualifying session to secure a brace of top ten results during rounds seven and eight of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship, held for the first time in Slovakia at the Slovakia Ring.
Saturday’s qualifying session saw the 32 year old Hong Kong racer finish with the sixteenth fastest time of the session, a result which left him as the eighth Yokohama Independent driver on the grid.
“Looking ahead we must work on getting stronger qualifying results,” said O’Young about his qualifying performance.
From his lowly grid position, O’Young set about fighting his way up the field and in both races he kept his nose clean on the opening lap to pass a number of his rivals.
At the end of the first race, O’Young took the flag seventh overall and fifth in the Yokohama Independents class, and he was pleased to have come out of the race without any incidents: “It was important to come out of race 1 without incident so my car would be in good condition to fight again in race 2.”
Off the standing start in race two, round eight of the season, O’Young once again avoided any trouble on the opening lap and took another top ten finish in ninth, which equalled fifth in the Independents class.
“I had the race pace to match the front of the field, but having to start from P16 just loses too much time and it is difficult to recover from that,” added O’Young.
The Slovakian results leave O’Young Thirteenth in the overall drivers’ Championship while he is sixth in the Yokohama Independents’, just three points off the top five.
“Finishing 7th and 9th overall after starting from P16 was really the maximum result possible,” concluded O’Young, who is back in action this weekend for rounds nine and ten of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship which takes place in Hungary at the Hungaroring. O’Young secured an Independents podium at the Hungarian venue in 2011.