EU 2000: Valencia Friday notes

Kobayashi dominates

Once again, Kamui Kobayashi (Prema Power Team) was the quickest man on the circuit during today's free practice at Valencia. The Japanese driver was followed by two drivers from the Jenzer Motorsport team, Adrian Zaugg and Michael Ammermuller.

The two Japanese drivers both put in a great display today on the Spanish circuit. First of all, at the start of this morning's session, it was Hiroyuki Matsumura (Graff Racing) who sensationally knocked off Michael Ammermuller from the top of the timesheets.

Miguel Albuquerque (Motorpark Oschersleben) retaliated, as did Adrian Zaugg (Jenzer Motorsport). But it was then Kobayashi who left all the others behind at the end of the session with a time of 1'32''809.

On a very hot track, times didn't improve this afternoon during the second session. Although Kobayashi's name appeared at the top of the timesheets on the monitors for the first few minutes, Ammermuller came back to set the fastest time of the afternoon session in 1'33''138.

Carlo Van Dam and Romain Grosjean, the SG Formula drivers, achieved a fine team performance, setting the second and third fastest times of the afternoon.

Michael Ammermuller (Jenzer Motorsport): "It isn't always easy to set good lap times in between red flags being shown! We have got a good set-up for qualifying. I'm not sure I'll be able to dominate proceeding this weekend, like I did at Zolder. I guess we'll see on Sunday evening!"

Junior Strous (Mr. Glow Motorsport): "I'm lapping quickly here, despite the traffic. There are even fewer staff than usual in the team as the father of one of my mechanics died yesterday."

Bertrand Baguette (Epsilon Euskadi): "I am right up there, even with worn tyres. My two new tyres were wasted by the red flags being shown. It's a good idea to separate the qualifying sessions into two series -- that way, there'll be less traffic."

Westley Barber (Comtec Racing): "Things went very well yesterday but we had an engine problem today. We are going to change it before qualifying."

Yann Clairay (SG Formula): "I don't really understand what's going on. I'm slower than my team mates without there being any obvious explanation. It's not quite so bad with worn tyres."

-renault