Simona: Finally a top result

In her third season in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship, the very popular touring car championship on the fifth continent, Simona de Silvestro achieved her best result to date on September 15. In the ITM Auckland SuperSprint at the Pukekohe circuit in New Zealand, the driver from Vaud brought her Nissan Altima V8 home in a good seventh place after 70 laps. She was also the best of the four Nissan drivers.

The short video shows the highlights of race 2 in Pukekohe. Simona started as 21st in the left row at the very back and finished seventh.

Bright spots
At the previous event, the "Swiss Missile" had qualified for the two races at Bend Motorsport Park in South Australia as good as 13th and 14th among 26 competitors. Unfortunately, she retired in the first race already in the scramble of the starting lap. In the second race, she was turned around by her teammate Andre Heimgartner, of all people, while trying to brake out and overtake her on the inside of a corner. This cost the only woman in the field several positions, leaving her unrewarded in P22.

Back in early July, tenth place in race 18 at Townsville's Reid Park Street Circuit in Queensland was a bright spot for the Swiss. She attributes the upward trend in the second half of the season not only to her own progress, but also to a new aero package for the Nissan and long-overdue test drives.

Outdated car
She described how hard the bread has become for her this year in an interview with AutoSprintCH on the occasion of the Swiss E-Prix in Bern.

Simona de Silvesto: "The Nissan is six years old, the Ford Mustang is new. The Ford and Holden have more downforce. That makes life difficult for us. Nissan Motorsport pulled out at the end of 2018, so Kelly Racing is now on its own. There's also not much investment anymore. So I'm just trying to make the best of it."

Top 10 as a realistic target
Nevertheless, she finds this championship, with its 600-horsepower V8 touring cars that seem archaic compared to the high-tech DTM cars in Europe, a cool series.

Simona de Silvestro: "With so much power and comparatively little downforce, it's quite difficult to tease the last out of these cars. That's why qualifying is my weakness. When you're at the back, a lot has to happen for you to make it to the front. Top-10 finishes are already something good for me and a podium almost impossible."

What does the future hold?
While she was 15th in the championship after her encouraging 15th and 16th place finishes at the season opener in Adelaide in the spring, she slipped to 20th position after eight races. She hasn't moved from that since for just one race (19th after race 15 in Darwin) despite her two twelfth-place finishes in the Perth night races. Her far more experienced teammate and co-owner Rick Kelly is also only 17th. In 2018, he had won another race with Nissan and finished on the podium three other times, which earned him eighth place in the championship.

This is little consolation for Simona de Silvestro, whose future is at stake once her three-year contract expires at the end of the 2019 season.

Simona de Silvestro: "I'm open to everything. I'd like to continue racing in the supercars. Wherever that is, the important thing is that the environment is right and there are prospects of success. In Formula E, I'm still a reserve driver for Venturi. But that role is always a bit boring if you don't get to drive yourself..."

supercars.com/drivers/simona-de-silvestro