Simona: Good start to the season in Adelaide 🎥

In qualifying, Simona de Silvestro still struggled somewhat with the balance of her Nissan Altima V8 from Kelly Racing, so that she did not go beyond grid positions 21 and 19. In both races on the Adelaide street circuit, she proved her fighting spirit in the enormous heat, which was rewarded with two top-16 finishes.

All four off the deck#VASC pic.twitter.com/GysheoXXFS

- Supercars (@supercars) March 2, 2019

Catching up after an unsuccessful start phase
She finished the first race over 78 laps (almost 110 minutes of driving) in a good fifteenth place.

Simona de Silvestro: "My start was bad, I lost a few positions straight away. But my pace was good afterwards, so I was able to gain places again with consistent lap times. A good race in itself, but there are things that could be even better."

Her second start was better, but she spun after contact. As a result, she dropped to the back of the field on the starting lap, but was lucky to have survived the incident unscathed.

Simona de Silvestro: "I tried to get back into a good rhythm as quickly as possible afterwards. I succeeded and was able to overtake some colleagues again. I was lucky that I was otherwise spared the many incidents. Unfortunately, after the pit stop I couldn't really attack on the used tires, otherwise more would have been possible. But it was only the first race and we now know what we need to work on for the Grand Prix."

Four sprints in the context of Formula 1
After the first two races, Simona de Silvestro occupies 16th intermediate place in the championship among 24 competitors. The next rounds of the 2019 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship - four sprint races - will take place in two weeks' time as part of the Formula One World Championship season opener at Melbourne's Albert Park.

The following video showed how the Kelly Racing team had prepared for the heat race in Adelaide:

supercars.com

kellyracing.com.au