This year's Red Bull GRC Washington DC event saw the same top two in the final as last year. However, this time the roles were reversed, allowing Nelson Piquet Jr. to take his first career Rallycross win, and Sandell to add to his own win from last time out in Detroit.I caught up with the two good friends after the event to hear their views on winning, and their role-reversal one year on
Nelson Piquet Jr. and Patrik Sandell Interview
Dominik Wilde: Finally a Global Rallycross winner! You must be so pleased after coming so close so many times. Does it feel like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders?
Nelson Piquet Jr.: It does feel like a weight has been lifted off our shoulders, it's very hard to be in these kind of situations. We've been together for a year and the car's not ours, its a rental car, we don't go testing, I think leading the championship last year in our first year was really really good. So I think this weekend we took it a little bit easy and things worked out. I mean, obviously because we have upgrades on the car, a change to the setup, but everything goes together.
Dominik Wilde: Now you've got a good chunk of the GRC season still to go, with that first win now out of the way, where do you go from here?
Nelson Piquet Jr.: Go out and try to do more wins, try to get better and try to get better every weekend.
Dominik Wilde: And you (Sandell) as well as Nelson you've recently got your first win of the year, Nelson his first of his career of course, how does that feel now after being the quickest car all year to finally win a race?
Patrik Sandell: It's perfect because the team has worked so hard and we have been unfortunate like in Daytona we were killing everybody, we were so fast and then me and Ken (Block) got contact in the final and I was out, [we] couldn't do the second day, we did the second day but with a broken gearbox, that was bad. We could easily have got some good points there. Same in the military base, leading the final by far, red flag, restart and in Detroit I was leading the final by far then the car broke down so when we got that win on Sunday it was an amazing feeling and I felt so good for the team.
Dominik Wilde: And on one hand it must hurt so badly to miss out on four easy wins and a lengthy championship lead you'd imagine, but on the other hand it must give you so much confidence knowing you're capable of annihilating the field on your day.
Patrik Sandell: Yeah if we have a good package as we have now, I know I can be really fast and I know that I can be up there all the time. It's good for me, good for the team when we go to a race that we will be able to fight for the top. We were actually struggling quite a lot there to find the perfect speed because now lately we've been spoiled by always being two or three tenths ahead of everybody and now we were just as fast, but no, it's good for the team.
Dominik Wilde: So you two are even now, so is it going to be back to hard fighting in LA then?
Patrik Sandell: No he owes me one now being we go every other...
Nelson Piquet Jr.: Now we're equal (laughs). Whoever had the first opportunity had to respect eachother. So at first it was me, then it was him, now it's me again so...
Dominik Wilde: So there's going to be no hotel meeting to decide who to gang up on next?
Nelson Piquet Jr.: Ah it depends on what girls are with us (laughs).
Image: Dominik Wilde for Red Bull Global Rallycross
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