Barcelona: Petrobras Junior Team qualifying report

FIA International Formula 3000
Round 3 Qualifying At Barcelona, Spain
26th April 2002

Unfortunately the Petrobras Junior Team did not have the best of days for round three of qualifying at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain. At the start of the first forty-minute session Antonio Pizzonia's car had an engine problem which lost him half of the time in the session when the quickest four drivers set their best times. The car improved throughout the sessions and Antonio moved up on his final lap to finish ninth. Ricardo Sperafico did not have the best of first sessions, finishing sixteenth but moved up to sixth, fifteen minutes into the second session. Unfortunately he did not go quicker on his last set of tyres and dropped just behind Antonio into tenth position. Imola's race winner Sebastien Bourdais starts in pole followed by Tomas Enge and Giorgio Pantano. Championship leader Rodrigo Sperafico starts in sixth position.

Antonio Pizzonia 1:33.423 - P9

"It has been very bad again and worse than before. The way we started qualifying was probably the wrong way with regards to the set-up and the car was undrivable. Then we had to make quite a few big changes to the car and it got better but unfortunately on the last set of tyres there wasn't enough time to make all of the changes on the car that I wanted. I also lost quite a lot of time with the engine problem at the start of the qualifying and all of the top four drivers were quickest on their second lap just like last year."

Ricardo Sperafico 1:33.450 - P10

"We didn't have a good result again. At the beginning of the first session the car was really bad and it had a different set-up than we normally use. We changed a lot from the first session to the second but we still didn't find the right set-up for a good lap in qualifying. On my last set of tyres we had a problem and I didn't improve my time. We still need to work a lot to get the car to the top three. It is not want we expected again but we will try and made some points tomorrow."

Team Manager - Paul Jackson

"Antonio's car developed a misfire in the pitlane before the start of the session which didn't help his chances because he missed what was probably the best circuit conditions. But with both drivers we worked through several changes to the cars to try and dial out the understeer we had and by the end of the sessions, we were getting closer to a balance on the car but we paid the penalty for not having the cars at their best when the circuit conditions were at their best. Consequently we will start ninth and tenth on the grid, but we hope to improve the cars further for the race but it is notoriously difficult here to overtake, so a good result is going to be hard work."

-pjt-