Formula Waga 2018 debut a success for the team

Sunday was race day for the team with the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne as the stage for what would be a classic race in Waga Racing League history.

With both Clipp and Hammoud attending the start of the 2018 season, things looked promising for the Sussex based team. The qualifying results of 8th (Clipp) and 21st (Hammoud) showed the difference in the drivers but gave hope for a very good debut result for the team.

The start of the race saw little issues with one car going off at turn three. This was until the final turn when a multiple car accident happened which, thankfully, didn't involve Hammoud. Clipp continued to chase the leaders up front whilst he tried to work on his One Stop strategy whilst Hammoud focused on climbing into the points.

As the race wound on it became a relatively quiet race for the team as the pit stop cycles phased in and out with relatively little change in the order. However, with the retirements of Cian White and Liam Kingsley, Clipp was up to P6 as he started his final run on the soft tyres to the end of the race.

Towards the end of the race disaster struck for Hammoud. Two accidents caused by driver error resulted in the Bulgarian firstly losing his front wing with the second incident sadly causing his retirement in the final few laps. Thus ending his race yet thankfully being in classification.

With the post race dramatics over with we sat down to take some short, post race comments from both drivers and Team Boss Elise.

Elise Skinner (Team Boss):

"Very impressed with both Matthew (Clipp) and Amer (Hammoud) after Melbourne. As much as we had both highs and lows we still finished higher than i was anticipating with the competition level although i know that the attrition rate was very high. Clipp was on a different strategy to the majority of the field so i was unsure about where we would finish. Even with us losing what could have been a potential P4 to finish P6, it's still an amazing start to our 2018 campaign with us sitting 5th in the constructors championship. With Bahrain in two weeks i'm very intrigued to see how the team does as i know we can improve. Hopefully we can also remain ahead of VRT and some of the other heavy hitting teams that had poor results at Melbourne."

Matthew Clipp (GBR - Driver - P6):

"I'm am happy to come away from the first race with some points in the bag. I rarely do well at Melbourne so a 6th place is not bad at all. I knew i didn't have the pace to get on the podium so I tried something a little different by going for a 1 stop strategy. Unfortunately this did not work and I was left with very old and worn tyres for the final laps, this strategy cost me a potential 4th place, but I will learn from this and will come back stronger for Bahrain." Amer Hammoud (BUL - Driver - DNF):

"As a first race of the season it was interesting.

Started at the back due to a poor qualifying session, went up a few positions in the opening lap. Then I had a spin which lost me a couple of seconds. After that I was holding my own until the pitstop in which my game minimized and lost me 20 seconds. Afterwards I was trying my best to try and get to the points, until I had an incident that made me lose my front wing. And then my final stint had me losing grip at the end of the stint and afterwards crashed in the chicane in sector two

Overall, it could have been pontential double points finish with Matthew who drove the wheels of the car, but sadly I chocked lost a lot of time and the chance of a points finish"

Relive the first race with the official WRL livestream with commentary by Ron Squire, Jeffrey Backer and Richard Cee: