FIA F2

Istanbul: Racing Engineering qualifying report

Racing Engineering targets points after tough qualifying Racing Engineering had an intense day at Istanbul Park, where Dani Clos qualified in seventh position on the grid for tomorrow's feature race, after encountering traffic and yellow flags ...

Published: May 29, 2010, 6:14 AM

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Racing Engineering targets points after tough qualifying

Racing Engineering had an intense day at Istanbul Park, where Dani Clos qualified in seventh position on the grid for tomorrow's feature race, after encountering traffic and yellow flags during his best runs, whilst rookie Christian Vietoris qualified in eleventh position after suffering from engine problems during both Friday sessions.

Hot and humid conditions welcomed the GP2 field at Istanbul Park, where the tyre management of Bridgestone's medium compound will be determining the race results. Therefore, the insights achieved during free practice and qualifying are extremely important.

Dani Clos started Friday's free practice suffering from some technical gremlins which left him with little time to set up his car. Nevertheless the young Spaniard set the sixth fastest time of the session. Christian Vietoris, having never been to the Turkish circuit before, had a good start to free practice, until he suffered from engine problems again. The German finished the session in a promising 7th place.

In the afternoon, Dani had a tough qualifying session. While he was immediately setting top times on his first set of tyres, he dropped back with his second set of tyres seeing his best laps being hampered by either yellow flags or traffic. Still, and with close gaps between competitors, he managed to score the seventh fastest time of the session, just half a second off Valsecchi's pole position. Christian's engine was still not running trouble free, but he managed to set the eleventh fastest time in qualifying while suffering from a loss of power.

The feature race at Istanbul Park, where Dani continues with his charge for the title, will take place tomorrow afternoon at 14:40h CET.

Dani Clos: "We had some problems this morning and spent a long time in the pit lane. When we joined the session, there was not much time left, and we only made couple of laps as a reference. Qualifying was tough. We have good sector times, but on every lap with second set of tyres, there was some issue, either traffic or a yellow flag. But it's OK. We know our race pace is really good. For tomorrow we have a good chance and good starting position. We will give our best, like always."

Christian Vietoris: "I had a busy morning session and still suffered from an engine problem, which occurred in free practice, also during qualifying. But generally things went well. I had my focus on learning this track and was within the top 5 most of the free practice. Things went quite well from the beginning.The car is good and I quickly felt comfortable with the track and was happy with everything. Qualifying went well until the engine started to cause problems again. We all hope this engine issue will be solved now as the starting position is not too bad for tomorrow, the speed is good and we can hopefully score some points."

Thomas Couyotopoulo, Sporting Director of Racing Engineering: "This morning has been difficult. We had to solve a minor technical problem on Dani's car in free practice. Dani did a good job with the little time left in the session and was able to get some good laps in and prepare his feedback for the qualifying session. Christian did a very good job as well with the focus on getting to know the track. Unfortunately, during the last two laps of free practice, Christian suffered from a problem with the engine. This has been solved, but in qualifying a different problem with the engine occurred and he suffered from some loss of power. He was in the top positions at the beginning of the session, but could not hold on to it and dropped back to P11, when the engine problems started again. Dani's results are mainly due to traffic and yellow flags he found on the track. He set reasonably good sector times, but wasn't able put them together. However, tomorrow is a long race and the medium compound tyres will have a big drop off as we could already see in qualifying. Our goal has to be scoring points in both races."

-source: racing engineering

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