Kent racing driver Mike Conway’s Long Beach race was brought to a premature end when his car suffered a gearbox problem at the weekend.

The winner of the 2011 Grand Prix of Long Beach race had a difficult qualifying session after an attempt to introduce some new set up changes to the car failed to work.

The Foyt Racing driver from Sevenoaks was only able to post the 14th fastest qualifying speed but due to the Chevrolet-powered cars being given ten place grid penalties Conway was promoted to P7.

“I’m pretty disappointed because I really wanted to have a strong run here,” said Conway. “The ABC car is not quite feeling the way I want yet. We just have to keep working at it.”

The race went green at 3.30pm local time but within two corners a full course caution was brought out to deal with Newgarden’s retirement. With a second full course caution brought out on lap 20, Conway took the opportunity to make his first pitstop of the afternoon however the stop didn’t run as smoothly as it could have and he rejoined the track in P16.

By lap 24 Conway was up to P15 but one lap later he began experiencing problems shifting into sixth gear. The car stopped on the back stretch but the safety crew managed to get it restarted and Conway came into the pits.

The team worked on repairing the damaged gearbox and Conway was sent back out on track six laps later. The plan was to log laps and finish the race, but just past the halfway point, Conway lost power in his car and was forced to retire from the race.

“It has been a tough weekend for us. We struggled in qualifying but made some changes overnight which improved things for the race. We were posting some decent lap times in the early part of the race but unfortunately the car suffered from a gearbox problem and then lost power completely so our race was over;” commented Mike Conway.

“Next up is Brazil in two weeks time. We’ll be working hard to deliver a solid result;” continued Conway.