Sergey Sirotkin scored his first points of the GP2 Series season on Thursday at Monaco, but the four points he earned for pole position were his only ones of the weekend after crashing out of a Feature race for the second time in as many races.
The ART Grand Prix driver had lost first place to Norman Nato into the first corner, but was hounding the Racing Engineering driver until he made another uncharacteristic error as he hit the barriers exiting the Swimming Pool complex.
“Everything started quite well this weekend, the pace was there, everything was there,” said Sirotkin on the ART Grand Prix website. “We had the quickest car and this is good obviously!
“Then, a very unlucky mistake in Race 1 which pushed me out from either the lead or at least a good podium position. It was a very unlucky combination of all the things together. We needed to rebuild the car and the team worked very hard to make sure it’s ready on time.”
Starting at the back of the grid for the Sprint race on Saturday, Sirotkin was unable to make much progress before pulling off to the side of the road at Casino Square with a technical issue.
“We had a little technical problem which ended my second race prematurely,” said Sirotkin. “But it didn’t change much anyway because we were out of the points.
“It was basically just a shake down for the new chassis. I did my best in that race but Monaco is not a track where you can overtake that much.
“I took a good start and then I couldn’t do anything but following the other cars. Now I hope things will get better in Baku.”