GP2 Championship 2008
Budapest Qualifying – Friday 1st August
The attention has turned to Budapest this weekend, as the GP2 Series moves into the seventh round of the season. Situated on the outskirts of the city, the Hungaroring is known as one of the most technical circuits on the calendar.
Qualifying 13th and 15th the Super Nova drivers were certainly physically tested around the demanding circuit, temperatures reaching 29° outside, but much higher in the car. Andy Soucek & Alvaro Parente completed 15 laps each, during the 30 minutes. Alvaro took a small detour off the track at turn 11, but managed to compose himself and continue on for the remaining of the session, setting some very quick times in sector one.
Twenty-four cars participated this afternoon, yet as always the fight for pole was fierce, with the top fourteen positions covered by just one second. It was Romain Grosjean, for ART that finally took pole position with a 1:27.782 lap.
There’s heavy braking here, so at one of the lowest speed tracks of the season, tyre management will play an important role in the race tomorrow. And at a track known for rare overtaking opportunities, Super Nova must keep out of trouble & push forward in tomorrows Feature race to finish in the points, something the team are confident can be done.
Team Principal David Sears "After an encouraging free practice things did not go according to plan in the official qualifying session. Andy Soucek slipped from 7th in free practice to qualify 13th, 0.9seconds off pole position.
Alvaro Parente ended up two tenths slower than Andy in 15th place. Hopefully the engineers and drivers will come up with a better race set up to enable the team and drivers to get some points, in a long and hot race tomorrow."
Alvaro Parente Q15 "It’s hard to know what to say, it was a bad qualifying for me today. We need to find speed in the car in the second sector. This is really important. We need to find minimum speed in the corners and basically a quicker lap, but its so close here, anything can happen tomorrow!"
Andy Soucek Q13 "Here in Hungary the times are always very close, the top 14 so tight, so a few tenths can really make all the difference, and push you up a few places. I was close to spinning a couple of times, and with the track being very narrow, and lots traffic, the combination just didn’t work for us today. However the position is not so bad, and I am positive we can still finish in the top eight tomorrow, and score some points"
P1 Romian Grosjean 1:27.782 ART Grand Prix
P2 Andreas Zuber 1:27.864 Piquet Sports
P3 Lucas Di Grassi 1:27.866 Barwa International Campos Team
- Super Nova -
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