Prema Powerteam delivered a brilliant showing in France, in the opening day for the 2016 FIA F.3 European Championship. The Italian squad scored three pole positions at the Le Castellet venue with Lance Stroll, who prevailed in Q1, and Maximilian Günther, who topped the Q2 session and also delivered the best second-fastest performance of the field to take the pole for race 3. The opening qualifying session provided plenty of excitement for the teams and drivers, with the track becoming quicker and quicker after some morning showers during practice.

Stroll put up an outstanding performance by fighting at the front and constantly responding to the quick laps set by his opponents. After ending up qualifying 1 in 8th, Günther set an amazing mark in the early stages. Nick Cassidy also scored some excellent results by taking second place in Q1 and Q2, with the Prema cars dominating the front row for all three races. Ralf Aron, who had to settle with 11th in the opening session, rebounded with a fourth place in qualifying 2, leading the way among rookie drivers.

# 1 - Lance Stroll

“I quickly broke the ice and started off the year with a pole position which is the best reward I could possibly give to myself and the team. It’s been a tough and interesting session, hard-fought all the way down to the checkered flag and with the laptimes getting quicker and quicker each time we crossed the line. In qualifying 2 I did my best, as usual, but I had to settle for eighth place. We are going to investigate what happened to see what went wrong.”

# 2 - Nick Cassidy

“First of all, thanks to the team for repairing my car perfectly after the crash in practice. It felt great. They did a phenomenal job and I went into qualifying feeling confident straight away. The first session has been positive. I fought hard for the pole until very late and second fastest is a great result. In qualifying 2, I was once again a frontrunner and ended up second, very close to the pole lap. I couldn’t hope for a better start!"

# 16 - Ralf Aron

"In Q1 the track was improving all the time, and basically everyone scored their best time on the penultimate or last lap. My penultimate lap was not good and so it was all down to the final one. There was a corner where, although I didn’t make an huge mistake, I wasn’t aggressive enough and lost a lot of momentum. In the end I got P11 which is not terrible but not as good as I expected. Q2 was quite good actually. I was expecting the tires to come in later and stay quick longer but there was a huge peak and I made a little mistake during the lap on that peak. Otherwise it was a good lap and P4 is quite ok so we will work on that tomorrow."

#17 - Maximilian Günther

“The first session has been quite difficult to deal with because the weather conditions kept changing throughout the 20 minutes. I improved lap after lap but it was essential to set the fastest possible time in the last lap. Unfortunately I got stuck with some traffic so I didn’t manage to improve. I ended up 8th which is not a disaster, but clearly doesn’t represent the potential we had. Everything went well in Q1. I quickly moved my way up the charts, I got on top and stayed there until the checkered flag. I also set the second fastest lap of the session so I even grabbed a double pole!”

Canadians In BOLD