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Racing Engineering – GP2 Magny Cours - Friday |
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Tuesday, 03 July 2007 |
Some positive results but there is still room for improvement, that’s the outcome for both the Racing Engineering cars in today’s qualifying session at Magny Cours. The base setup achieved last week and which gave such good lap times at Paul Ricard, wasn’t as well suited as was expected to the recently resurfaced northern French track that is the venue for this weekend’s fourth round of the 2007 GP2 series
Javier Villa and Ernesto Viso have been improving throughout the day,
working closely with their engineers to get the best possible setup on
the pair of Racing Engineering Dallaras. After finishing the free
practice session 18th (Viso) and 23rd (Villa), with lap times over the
1:24 mark, the two drivers improved dramatically in the qualifying
session. Javier manager to get down to a 1:22:809 good enough for a
place on the seventh row of the grid, and just one second shy of the
pole and one tenth away from eighth position. Ernesto also improve
quite a lot on his previous best time although he couldn’t obtain a
better position as he, quite understandably, suffered from a car setup
that’s not yet suited to his driving style as today was the first time
he has sat in the Racing Engineering Dallara.
Both drivers were happy with how the cars worked and feel confident
regarding their scope for improvement which allow the whole team to be
optimistic before tomorrow’s race, the longest of the weekend, where
the first target will be to look for positions among the top 8 in order
to get the best possible starting spot for Sunday’s sprint race.
Alfonso D'Orleans (team principal): ”At the end of the day I’m not
completely happy. We are working in the right direction but today we
saw that not everything that worked at Paul Ricard was good here and
now we’ve still got some tests to pass. What we have to do now is look
for our weaknesses and try to work out how to solve them overnight in
order to be better tomorrow for the race. Javi is well placed to do
some good recovery work and I’m sure Ernesto is perfectly capable of
winning races; it’s only that we have to adapt the car to him and we
haven’t yet had the time to do it. The whole team has been working
really well and the cars worked faultlessly which is always positive”
Javier Villa (driver car 14): ”I finished 13th but just one tenth away
from 8th which is quite good. We have been improving the whole day,
since being 23rd in free practice and I’m pretty sure we can improve
still further tomorrow. If we can get yet another three tenths we will
be with the leaders so we will have to push from the very beginning of
the race in order to be there with them.” Ernesto Viso (driver car 15):
”Things weren’t that good as we were all hoping but there is a big
improvement margin there, especially because we had almost no time to
prepare for this first race. The car setup is best suited for a
different driving style so we have to adapt it to better suit me but we
are already working on this with the team”
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